A Handful of Lauras (Adama Roslin Roslin Roslin)
by Emma Ockham
Summary: Adama's grief over Roslin's death is softened by the journals she left him, and then brusquely interrupted when a Cylon!Laura shows up at Bill's doorstep on Battlestar Galactica. Sequel to No Phoenix for Roslin. Designed to be read separately as well. Warnings: Cylon deaths and heady frakking. Guest stars: Cottle, Tigh, Cavil, D'Anna, Leoben.
1. Part I - Chapter 1

Author's note: Can be read separately.

Sequel to "No Phoenix for Roslin", in which a very ill Laura was offered 'a new body' by the Cylons. She partnered up with Bill and staged a suicide run against the Resurrection Ship, where the Cylons had invited her for the 'procedure'

Time: This is a season 2 universe. The Final Five haven't discovered their true identity yet, D'Anna Biers is only a journalist, Bill is a Commander and Cottle is still called Jack. Bill and Laura were in a (covert) relationship in No Phoenix.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

With huge thanks to Afrakaday, Obsessive_a101, Bwie66 and Lanalucy for their thorough advice and help to bring this story to new levels.

* * *

[Commander's Quarters, six months after No Phoenix ends]

There had been a time when the rustle of her clothes, the quiet murmur of her voice, the gentle touch of her fingers on his skin had formed the comfortable background of his life and he hadn't appreciated it fully. Now, his quarters were empty.

He had found ways to dim the ache and the solitude when he labored through his days leading the crew, shepherding the Fleet, promoting nuggets, wondering if today could be the day that the Cylons would show up again. But in the evenings her absence haunted him.

He was grateful that her sacrifice had bought them a cessation of Cylon hostilities and he was increasingly hopeful that maybe her destruction of the Resurrection Ship had ended the war - that, maybe, the war had been over for six months already.

He poured himself a drink and turned to the weathered buckskin knapsack on the small counter near his couch. He knew what he would find inside: her diaries, her farewell gift to him. He didn't know what they would bring him, if he read them. Would he have her back, if only for a moment? Would the loss be more poignant, more racking? Would her diaries disrupt his image of her or their bond?

So he had waited. He had been circling the bag since she gave it to him half a year ago. He was well-known for his patience and he took pride in it.

This morning, in CIC, when Dee had laughed at a quip Gaeta made, Bill had tried to recall the delighted expression on Laura's face right before she would start giggling. He found that he couldn't. He had frowned, closed his eyes against the distractions around him, and tried to reconstruct it, to piece it together bit by bit, the slant of her neck, the twitch of her lips, the helpless waving of her hands, but it wouldn't come. Saul had been at his side in no time.

He had shrugged Saul off and waited for his shift to end, hoping to find her mirth in the diaries.

The glass an anchor in his hand, he walked over to the satchel and sat down next to it. He swallowed, put the drink down, opened the knapsack with measured movements and peered inside. It smelled like old leather and, faintly, like her. In the dimness inside, a small purse rested on top of several dark hard booklets.

He picked up the green velvet prize as if it was a wounded sparrow and balanced the featherweight package in his hand, before opening it with clumsy fingers. Inside lay an elfin crystal flask. He poured it in his too large hand and caressed the sophisticated lettering with a finger tip. _Caprican Dawn_. A whiff of her scent drifted up. She was with him, instantly.

She sauntered out of the head, dressed in her negligee, ambling confidently towards him; her eyes alight with mischief and intent. There was no distracting her when she was in a mood like this. Her lovemaking would be quick and fervid, a vortex, skipping the intro, taking them both to a place of murmured encouragements, persuading skin, firing nerve ends and an unreserved mutual release that would leave them both panting, crumpled and content in its wake.

He exhaled. As his breath escaped, he felt how his body had responded with need at only the scent of her. He coaxed his eyes to open and to take in the emptiness of his quarters, to let reality seep back in; his loss more prominent, his resolve more brittle than before.

Carefully, he positioned the flask on top of the soft purse on his table, and tugged the larger satchel close. He unlatched it further and wiggled out the top booklet. Laura's perfume clung to its leathery burgundy cover too, and he stilled, inhaling it, his instincts winning over his judgment as the image of the curve of her hips emerged, her tender smile when she left him at night, and her helpless giggles. He allowed himself to drift. It was all he had left.

The volume opened to a random page. Her handwriting was precise and well-designed, a teacher's hand that had evolved to the refinements of high public office.

 _One of the downsides of being president, is that it is impossible to hold on to the pretense that anyone cares about what happens to Laura Roslin anymore. I am the road to other people's goals, a means to their ends._  
 _Adama, however, seems to see me, at times._  
 _He has his goals, and he wants to reach them through me, too, but sometimes he seems to see the woman and not the means. Or, at least, he sees the legs and not the presidency._

He snorted quietly, agreeing with her assessment of him in those early days, amused at the playfulness with which she had caught him considering her. He skipped a few pages.

 _He found a place only a few inches behind me, as if he didn't have the first inkling about personal space, the military philistine. And yet, when my lungs filled with his scent, and his body warmth seeped through my clothes into my back, there was this instant where I stopped being annoyed with him and wanted to turn, trail my finger over his chest, unbutton this fancy dress uniform of his and explore his skin. I must be mad._

If only he had known at the time. He grinned and flipped another handful of pages.

 _Sex with him is a different thing. Where Richard's lust for power overshadowed his fantasies and the kind of women he invited to join us, Bill, behind his deep-rooted Husker bravado, is a thoughtful lover, careful of the limits that my body inflicts on us both._  
 _Underneath it, I sense that, if we would have met at a different time, he would have gladly followed me in the brasher and more burning plays I have come to enjoy._  
 _Acted out with a real soldier in a real brig some of Richard's scenarios would become, ah, overpowering. Too late for us now._

Bill stared at the page, at her other life.  
He wondered what he would have done if he had known this, then. She had been right about his willingness to follow her to new horizons. Having weathered her overriding weakness with her, he knew it had been too late indeed, and he was grateful they had had the time they had.

He skipped to the end.

 _I have to convince Bill to let me go. The opportunity to destroy the Resurrection Ship cannot be missed. Not much to lose. It is almost time to give it up. But one more night, just one more night to be at home in his rack._  
 _Tomorrow I will set the plan in motion._

He stiffened, their last night a vivid memory, the tenderness, and, later, her stifled anguish and her retreat - the finality of it.

He knew she would have been dead by now, even if she would not have taken out the Resurrection Ship. He knew that leaving Laura her own choice had been the best course of action.  
It didn't fill the emptiness.

He picked up his glass, took a deep swig and, as the liquid coursed down and warmed him, he sank back against the couch, opened her journal to the first page and started reading in earnest.

* * *

[Three months after Laura's death]

She woke little by little, her memory a daze of fleeting impressions, her mind murky, absorbing in small increments that she was resting in a bath of pleasantly warm fluid, resting comfortably and naked. There was something off about it, something not exactly right, but she felt satisfied and soothed, and a slight glitch in the universe was not enough to bother her now, now that there was no pain.

She moved her toes tentatively – there was not even tenderness. She tried her fingers just to be sure. Nothing. Not even the relentless cold. Laura let out a shivering sigh and relaxed deeper into the balmy bath. Heaven, at last.

"She will come out of it any moment now," a gravely dark voice said too close to her left ear.

"I agree," a similar voice answered from the right.

Something was definitely off. Not enough to bother her, but she slowly crossed an arm over her breasts and brought a hand down to cover her pelvis. It felt better that way in an undefined way.

"Oh, cut it out," the voice on the left said, "It's not as if we haven't seen it all before."

Her eyes snapped open.

Two identical, grey-haired, black-clothed men hovered over her, eying her without reserve.

She gasped. Suddenly feeling her nudity, she sat up straight, covering herself with more vigilance, splashing some of the gooey fluid out of the tub.

One of the elderly men jumped back from the wave, cursing under his breath, but the other, in a sophisticated gesture, held out his hand, offering to help her out of the bath, as if everything was quite as it should be.

"Welcome to the Resurrection Hub, Laura."


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:**

 **Please mind the warning. This chapter is gritty and heady. Not for kids.**

 **Huge thanks to Afrakaday, Obsessive_a101, Bwie66 and Lanalucy for their support and excellent advice.**

.

.

* * *

[Six months after Laura's death, Bill's Quarters]

He took the diary to his rack, reading small sections before going to sleep, rationing her messages, drawing out his limited supply as long as he could.

 _He has reflexes I find reassuring in a military man. When pulled into a closet he doesn't waver, but seizes the opportunity._

Bill snorted. It hadn't been quite the coup she described. She'd been watching him, scanning their surroundings, and bubbling with suppressed mirth before she'd made her move.

 _He even growled "Madame President" as if accepting a formal invitation, before he took over, kissed me, hitched up my skirt and had me too breathless to call him anything but Sir, yes Sir._

He hadn't expected her to be this explicit in her journal. A good thing this booklet had not been given to the Colonial Archives.

 _I was too keyed up to wrestle with the clips of his uniform. He chuckled, but declined to help me._

Her peeved look had made him laugh. Not complying had come natural after that.

 _He stepped into the dominant role without ado, without context or training. It came naturally to him. It was part of the initial attraction. I guess. He is solid and resilient, strong enough to share the burden of command, and the one man I trust to remain standing when I slip and fall, or take a break from my responsibility for a minute or two in a closet._

She'd melted against him with a muffled whimper, and dropped the vestiges of her position in a boneless surrender that left him breathless. He'd swallowed and stepped into the role.

 _"Turn," he commanded in his no nonsense CIC voice. His hands on my hips helped me turn, until he was satisfied with my position. My hands rested against the bulkhead._

Her compliance had sparked unexpected protectiveness and a sudden surge of lust. When she'd rolled her hips against his crotch, he'd buried his face in her hair with a grunt. He'd been breathing high and fast, soon losing perspective. He stepped back.

She'd made a pained sound and twisted her neck to glower at him.

"No," he'd said.

She'd pouted adorably before unhurriedly turning her head back to the bulkhead. He smiled.

Keeping his distance, he'd let a finger amble downward, following the curve of her butt, to the warmth between her legs. He took his time. She'd groaned and wriggled. When his finger entered her, she'd exhaled hard and shuddered, wet and ready.

He'd leisurely pulled down her panties with both his hands and she stepped out of her shoes to help him get rid of them. In the confined space the scent of her arousal sluggishly permeated his senses.

 _His hand tapped my butt, possessively as an owner, and for a second Richard was there in the closet with us. I shivered. "Spread them, Madame President," Bill intoned near my ear, tapping my hip. He wields his voice like a weapon; there should be laws against that._

He'd held his breath, ordering her like that, for fear of breaking the spell, but she had quivered and complied with an urgent immediacy.

"More," he'd demanded, just for the sake of it, and the sight of his half clad President opening herself even wider in eager anticipation had wrecked his resolve. He'd freed his straining erection.

 _I leaned against the bulkhead, bent forward, my skirt up, offering myself up to this soldier, too jittery to speak. How long would he draw this out?_

 _The sound of his zipper came as a relief. He stepped close. His dick ambled over my thigh, and I bent deeper. He slipped inside with slow deliberation._

On the couch in his quarters, Bill's hand came to rest on his crotch. He was there again, with her, in the closet, entering her slick warmth.

 _Galactica_ 's engines had droned and whirred. In the warmth of the closed locker, sweat had beaded on his forehead, and he'd blinked drops out of his eyes. She'd trembled around him, panting, her head dropped forward between her shoulders. He'd waited for her to adapt.

 _Will I ever get used to his size? It's a good thing he cannot ruin me for other men._

Bill, on his couch, freed his cock, and enveloped it, copying her tightness.

 _I fought not to come from the penetration alone. I wanted to prolong this. He waited for me to relax, then took over, setting a slow rolling pace, thrusting with his full body, rendering us both blind and groping._

 _He knows what he's doing to me._

Bill tightened his hand around his dick, stroking himself and thumbing his foreskin back.

She'd known what she had been doing to him too, rocking against him, her muscles undulating around him, egging him on to accelerate, to use force where he'd never done that with her before, her illness a barrier he would not cross.

In his quarters, his hand found her old rhythm, her pattern of enfolding and clasping around him.

 _Gods, it is easy to give over control to him._

For a time nothing had existed but her scent, the pressure she exerted, her heavy breathing, her low whimpers, and her tight heat around him.

The buckling of her knees and the backward angling of her head tipped him off. As her hips stilled, his hand had rushed up to her mouth. She came, her cry muffled by his hand, her body quivering against his.

He'd bucked a last few strokes in her and had come hard, losing his balance with the force of it, and barely saved them both from falling by bracing himself against the bulkhead, over her, his hands not far from hers, his ragged breathing stirring her hair.

 _There is something utterly uncomplicated about having sex with William Adama. He works me over like a pilot his ship, as unpretentiously as he drinks his coffee, or as naturally as he reads his books. But he knows what he is doing to me, there is no doubt about that, and he likes doing me as much as I him._

 _We're an impossible match, the soldier and the school teacher, but he completes me._

 _Why have we waited so long?_

Bill had come to regret the time they had wasted even more in the past six empty months. They could have had so much more, if he'd only acted on his impulses and not waited until she propositioned him. "Follow your instinct", he'd advised Lee. Hah. The hollowness of it.

 _He leaned against me, limp and heavy, out of breath, until wetness dripped past his cock down my leg and he stepped back. In the sudden cold, I heard a rustle of drawers and then felt strong and tender strokes up my legs, over my lips._

 _He carefully pulled up my panties, placed my feet back in my pumps, straightened my skirt and turned me so he could tend to my blouse and jacket as if I was unable to. I was not, but there was a new tenderness in his hands and in his eyes, a measure of care and affection that hadn't been there before. It drew me in._

 _Hampering his efforts to dress me, I moved closer and kissed him. His lips were warm and welcoming. He hummed against me and deepened the kiss until our tongues followed the caresses of his hands in my hair._

 _When I withdrew, panting, it was still there, in his eyes. I knew what it was now. It was too much. It would hurt him. But still it was there. I pulled him close._

 _"Me too," I whispered in the hollow of his neck._

 _His hand faltered, he lifted my chin, and his eyes searched mine, vulnerable with hope. We breathed shallowly into each other's faces in that endless moment, reading the other's eyes, nothing hidden, nothing withheld. I nodded my affirmation, swallowing a sob, weak with love, but it was redundant. We were together, belonged to the other, already. We just hadn't known._

 _He shuddered, reeled me in and embraced me._

They had not made it to their scheduled meetings that day. He had taken her to his quarters and they had nestled in his bunk, close, content with feeling each other and smiling, grinning like fools, like new lovers.

.  
.

* * *

[Resurrection Hub, 4 months after Laura's death]

Laura walked the hallways of the Resurrection Hub, studying the projections she cast around herself, slipping in and out of forests, clouds, her old home on Caprica and the solid hallways of _Galactica_ as she pleased. It was a fun game, though she'd soon discovered that recreating Bill's Quarters was stinging and consoling at the same time.

A Three walked by her side, towering, escorting her, never quite touching. Laura was glad she didn't. Discovering that the brash journalist D'Anna Biers was a hitherto unknown Cylon model had shocked her. She realized there may be another model at large in the Fleet. She'd never seen a Seven. It could be anyone. As there was no way to warn Bill, she put the thought aside and let the Cylon guide her to a meeting that had been given no other introduction than: "You'll find it interesting, I promise you, Laura."

As if anything could interest her. It baffled her that, despite the more than twenty copies of herself that she had already self-destructed, the Cylons hadn't recognized that her only wish and her entire mission, was to cease living. They'd been adroit enough, though, to remove the most obvious sharp objects from her immediate environment. Inviting her to a meeting was a new development.

All but one of the seats around the table were already occupied. One copy of each model. Laura knew them all, the Simons and Cavils more intimately than she'd have preferred.

Aaron and Simon were already seated on the right side of the table, sipping water from their glasses, while Sharon chatted with Cavil at the head of the table and, at the left side a Shelly Godfrey talked with Leoben over an empty chair that was obviously meant for D'Anna.

Cavil looked up and froze in mid sentence. The customary sardonic expression on his face fell to irritated incredulity, and then to distrust and a disgust that was mainly aimed at D'Anna.

"What," he snarled, "is she doing here?"

"If she's a Cylon model," D'Anna said with a hint of smugness that undercut the smoothness of her voice, "than she has a right to attend the Board Meetings like any of us, John."

"Don't call me, John!" Cavil suddenly stood, his face red.

Laura shrank back. What had she been dragged into? She tried to move backwards, out of the room, unwilling to participate as a pawn in a political dispute that was clearly not new to the group, but the Three stayed behind her, her hand firmly in the small of Laura's back.

Leoben, at the left, grinned. "She is right," he stated with an impartiality that sounded strained to Laura's experienced ears. "The Thirteens should have their representative in the Board too."

"The Nines," Cavil grated.

It resembled a Colonial Quorum meeting, with Cavil the President who was being blindsided by one of the members, and forced to address a thorny topic he'd clearly been hoping to avoid for another few months or even years. Laura would have empathized with him but for her loathing of the whole line of Cavils and their insistent and repulsive experiments on her, an animosity that had risen to levels that had her contemplating killing him instead of herself, next time.

"And she's not a Representative," Cavil bit at Leoben. "She's the only copy, a test case, hardly viable, and most certainly not ready."

Yes, never mind me hearing you, Laura thought. Insults were not her main problem with his line.

"The number of copies has very little to do with it," Sharon suggested with a show of deference to Cavil, "or you'd not be allowed in here either."

Ah, the unanticipated back stab by the friendly foe. Laura smiled despite herself. Politics were a fun game when you were only an observer. The number of Ones was kept artificially low by the Ones themselves, Cavil had told her when she had started to recognize the two men that had repeatedly revived her were the same two copies all the time.

"You want to play God, as if God himself does not exist," Leoben said, playing the religious card, heralding dogmatic opinions and unwavering determination.

Distaste flickered over Cavil's face.

"You tamper with her until she fits your ideal," Godfrey said before Cavil could respond. "I propose that we review how far any of us is allowed to go in changing each other's parameters."

The room came alive with a murmur. Obviously, the idea of being tampered with didn't sit well with any of the models.

There was an open seat between Godfrey and Leoben, and, in the chaos of the moment, D'Anna guided Laura towards it, seating her, creating the _fait accomplis_ of Laura's participation. The Three took a stance behind the chair, her hands on Laura's shoulders, clearly determined to see this through to the very end.

Leoben, at Laura's left, turned to nod at her in a friendly and welcoming way. She inclined her head, grateful that airlocking one of his copies had not made his whole line overly hostile towards her.

She considered them, arguing amongst themselves in pairs, more involved in their discussion than Laura had been in anything since her resurrection.

If she could participate, become a part of this governing body, could she help the Fleet? Was that worth living for?

Then again, what would happen when she no longer could defy Cavil's attempts at programming her? What would happen to the Fleet when she became a Cylon in earnest?

Her new inclination to even consider keeping on living probably was indicative of the progress Cavil was making with her programming. Why had she not killed this copy already? She shivered, distrusting herself. It had to stop.

On the table the decanter and the water glasses spoke of their possibilities.

"We'll not modify anyone's specs," Cavil placated his brethren, "not unless the whole Board agrees, and you know that."

At this blatant lie, Laura's eyes found his. Her retort welled up in her, but she stopped herself, stiffening imperceptibly from not speaking up, not getting involved in this. Indignation would only ignite the flame inside her and prolong her life.

"I agree. We can't," the Three said. Her hands squeezed Laura's shoulders reassuringly.

"But _she_ ," Cavil pointed at Laura, "is not a model yet. The rules don't apply."

"Is she your private play thing then?" Godfrey asked Cavil, "that you can decide on her line's specifications all alone?"

Laura winced, too aware of the truth of the accusation, wondering what the others knew about his experimentations with her. Torture was a word that fit better than play, but only a fool would argue ethics with a machine.

"Of course not," Cavil evaded smoothly, "I'm trying to save her life."

They all turned their heads towards Laura, obviously aware of the persistency with which she had killed at least twenty of her copies. Cavil could be right.

Laura leaned forward as if to answer, studiously slow and unthreatening, and she picked up the water glass in front of her, as if contemplating a swig from it before answering the unspoken question that was in their eyes.

With a sudden snap, she smashed the glass against the hard surface of the table. Water sprayed in the direction of Cavil and Aaron. Simon jumped up from his chair, dismay on his face. He was too familiar with her inventiveness.

Laura grabbed a shard and held it above her left wrist. In a clear voice, as if addressing a particularly dense group of students, she said: "I, Laura Roslin, do not want to live as a Cylon model. Let me die."

D'Anna bent over her. "Please, don't," she breathed in her hair, caressing her shoulder, but not interfering.

"Grab her!" Cavil shouted.

Simon was already moving around the table and Aaron rose as well, but Leoben, who was much closer, just looked at Laura in a kind way, as if he understood her motives perfectly and as if he was willing to let her live, or die, through her own actions and choices. Then he nodded gravely, as in a salute, understanding she'd chosen already.

"Back off!" Laura bit, but Aaron and Simon kept moving in on her.

Knowing her window was short, she resolutely brought the cool chip of glass to the skin of her left wrist and in a firm, practiced, motion, cut it. Through the instant fountain of blood and before the delayed flash of pain could kick in, she passed the slippery shard to her left hand and cut her right wrist too, the blood spraying over the table, her clothes, showering Godfrey and Leoben in the process.

They jumped away from the carnage; Leoben keeping eye contact, as if, in her dying moments, she'd disclose something he wanted to know. Godfrey held the wet skirt of her ruined dress away from her legs, looking appalled.

Life flooded out Laura with the pleasing swiftness she had come to expect from arterial lacerations. "I," she muttered as the world closed around her, "do not... want ..."

Her eyes shut out the room and her consciousness pulled itself to that low, dark place at the bottom of her skull she had come to know so well.

She would have slid under the table if D'Anna had not caught her and hoisted her body back into the chair. Even behind closed eyelids the world whirled around Laura from that abrupt dislocation.

Cold fingers found the place on her throat where her feeble pulse fluttered. Simon had reached her.

"Now, that was illuminating." Cavil's sarcasm penetrated the vestiges of Laura's consciousness. "Thank you so much for your help, Three. Another piece of hard work destroyed."

"The point still stands, One," Godfrey said. "No tampering with models without consent of the Board."

"I told you, I don't and I won't," Cavil answered impatiently. "You, however should stop tampering with my experiments!"

The fingers left her throat. Laura waited for the inevitable lifesaving actions, but Simon's footsteps removed themselves. They'd given up on this copy. She had won once more.

In peace, she lingered, waiting for the welcoming light. Sometimes she would see Bill for a few moments before the end. That would be nice.

"Then it is okay that I bring the next Roslin to the Board Meeting too?" D'Anna asked sweetly from high above.

"It is not!" Cavil bristled.

"Let's vote," Leoben proposed glibly.

"Yes, let vote," Godfrey seconded. "Is Thirteen a Cylon model or not?"

"Nine," Cavil corrected tiredly.

"Very well," Godfrey said. "The vote is still open. Who thinks Nine is not a Cylon?"

There was a loaded silence. Laura wished she could persuade her eyes to open, and count the raised hands, but her body was infinitely past the point to consider following her wishes.

"That settles it," D'Anna summarized pleasantly. "She's on board."

The light enveloped her.

With a smile on her lips, Laura surrendered to it.


	3. Chapter 3

[Bill's Quarters, Laura's diary]

 _Bill asked after my toys today, between the soup and the main course. I denied, in a reflex I didn't quite understand. My toys have always been mine. I don't think Richard even had a clue they existed._

Bill grinned. "Why do you think I have them?" she'd asked in her flat politician's tone.

"A woman like you would have toys," he'd said, knowing the bland assumption would ruffle her feathers, but unable not to tease her for her strange reluctance after their unreserved explorations.

 _Women like me? Isn't the President entitled to a category of her own?_

Bill snorted, remembering her arched brow. She'd tried to deflect, and asked him what types of women didn't have toys then, in his 'expert opinion', the quote signs underscored by her eye roll.

 _"There's the Ellen Tigh type that simply grabs the nearest guy," he went on. "She wouldn't use the artificial thing as long as a male with a pulse is on hand."_

He'd made it up, of course. Who knows what toys Ellen had and why?

 _Was I losing a comparison with Ellen Tigh? And how could he possibly know these things about her? Were the rumors about her right, and had Bill occasionally been 'the man with a pulse' she'd pulled into her web? It seemed a very un-Adama kind of thing to do. Tigh was his friend, and Ellen was a – . Never mind._

No wonder she'd looked at him like that.

 _"And then there are women who are too shy about their sexuality to walk into a store to shop for a nice toy," he continued, clearly not reading my face. "But that's not who you're either."_

Sometimes he sounded like a pompous ass, he thought. He rubbed his face, took a swig of water and read on.

 _"So the only question is," he said, "did you bring your toys to the decommissioning of the Galactica? It being the day you heard about the cancer, I can't be sure."_

 _Oh Gods, he'd thought about this. And a good deal too. He was maneuvering as if he was treading on thin ice. How had his wife reacted to this kind of enquiry?_

 _"I didn't know about the cancer when I did the packing," I said._

 _"Good," he said, "then let's have some fun."_

She had looked away as if to hide her emotions, then eyed him up and down through her lashes and asked: "Why would I want a silicon toy when I have the Fleet's Commander at my beck and call?"

Parts of his body had reacted to her assertion with eager readiness.

"Sometimes two is better than one," he'd said.

 _I hadn't thought him the experimental type, but he was a soldier, a cocky pilot called Husker, before he became a middle aged Commander. His was not a bad idea._

"Unless you want me to invite Saul in," he added, as if he really considered the option.

It had been an option! He'd shared more than one woman with Saul, back at the freighter, though Saul's taste in women was more on the raucous randy side, so he'd been a somewhat unsure whether Saul would see Laura as an option.

 _Saul Tigh! Gods! The thought alone was sobering. Picturing a naked Tigh was a definite turnoff._

 _Another man might have been interesting. Tigh dislikes me almost with jealousy._

 _Next time I crossed over to Galactica, I made sure to bring my anthracite vibrator._

Bill remembered her unpacking the toy, sitting on his couch and handing it to him. It had smelled of soap. He'd remedied that.

.

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* * *

[Colonial Raptor, one month ago]

It resembled a normal colonial raptor. It probably was one. Laura assumed the Cylons had taken hundreds of them, stranded in airports or tucked away in carriers after they overtook the Colonies.

The experiments had not been a success, Cavil had told her. He'd stopped trying to create the Roslin line and was sending her back to where she came from. Not by his own free will, he said, visibly chagrined. If it had been up to him he would simply have let her kill herself one last time, but the Twos, Threes, Sixes and Eights had gotten sentimental about it and romanticism in machines disgusted Cavil like little else, so he'd stepped out of the meeting and allowed them to vote in favor of her departure.

Relief had washed over her. She'd not ever expected to survive, and now -

Cavil hadn't fooled her for long, but she hoped she'd duped him long enough with her joyful gullibility, to escape the Resurrection Hub in this raptor.

She would not go back to the Fleet. She could not without triggering a cascade of catastrophes that would cause its destruction, Bill's derailment being a vital and inevitable part of that.

She permitted herself to be shepherded into the raptor and let the programmed auto pilot fly her out of the Resurrection Hub.

When the raptor was clear of the Hub, she shifted to the chair of the primary pilot, to study the dashboard and its buttons. There were a great many more than she'd anticipated. Which one was the steering wheel?

One glowing control was labeled _auto pilot_. She pressed it with her index finger. There was a click. The button's light went off, the ship shuddered and slowed down, leaning slightly backward, its nose coming up. It was more of a reaction than she'd anticipated, but it pleased her. This raptor would never reach the Fleet.

Her finger tips traveled over the console while her eyes scanned the buttons and their texts. There was a set with arrows that seemed to indicate direction. She pushed the one to the right. The floating vessel sluggishly changed direction, back to the Resurrection Hub. _Yes_

She placed one hand on the throttle and pushed it forward, slowly. The raptor engine roared and the machine accelerated. The Resurrection Hub slowly came into view.

Where to go? She scanned the vessel for the compartment where the Cavils were stored and smirked when she saw more than a thousand naked Cavils, stacked neatly in their holding areas. She'd show him what she thought of his promises. It was time to pay the bills.

She accelerated the ship.


	4. Part II - Chapter 4

**This chapter grim. If that's not your thing, maybe don't go there.**

 **With huge thanks to Afrakaday, Obsessive_a101, and Bwie66 for their thorough advice, sound suggestions and help to bring this story to new levels.**

* * *

[Galactica, Hangar Deck, a month later]

When Bill crossed the threshold of the Hangar Deck on his daily round through his ship, the silence stopped him.

On other days, the clattering of equipment and the buzzing of crew members would soothe him, assuring him that the resilience of his crew would keep his birds in the air, that they were not defeated yet, and would could keep on fighting this war for at least another day.

He slipped inside and moved to a nearby poorly lit corner of the Deck. There, he studied the hushed disorder in the center of the vast open space that was supposed to be the heart of his ship.

A dozen orange-clad deckhands crowded around a single battered raptor. Others, still at their stations, eyed the frayed spacecraft. There was no sense of imminent danger, merely the impression of bafflement and perhaps, unexpectedly, of hope.

Bill started towards the raptor.

Socinus, at the edge of the group, spotted him and stiffened as if he were caught brewing something illicit. He poked Cally, muttered under his breath and then her head jerked toward Bill too.

Bill increased his pace.

A whisper ran through the pack and more heads turned, some paling, some eying him with eager interest.

Saul's balding cranium emerged above the crew as he straightened on the ramp of the raptor. He spotted Bill's advance, barked a short command into the raptor's open hatch, jumped off the ramp and pushed himself through the crowd toward Bill.

When they met, Saul held up his hand, signaling Bill to halt.

"Report," Bill said.

"You don't want to go in there."

He leveled his gaze at Saul. This was the man he shared the burden of command with. He trusted him with his ship and his life. "I don't?"

Saul shook his head. The shimmer of compassion in his eyes unnerved Bill.

Bill's muscles tightened. "Is it Lee?" He craned his neck to see the raptor over his friend's shoulder.

"Lee is flying CAP." Saul waved his worries away. "The kid's fine."

Bill's shoulders relaxed. "Then what?"

Behind Saul, Cottle's head emerged out of the raptor's hatch. "Get me that sack of blood, on the double, or we won't need it anymore."

Private Jaffe extricated himself from the crowd and hurried past the two men.

Bill's gaze followed the boy.

"Press on the wound, Ishay," Cottle's gravely voice rang harsh in the eerie silence. "Keep it closed until I've dressed it."

"Will she live?" Ishay probed from inside the raptor.

The orange-clad crowd leaned forward to catch the answer.

Saul held his breath too.

"Those aren't half measures she took," Cottle said, with a hint of respect in his voice. "But she has a pulse. For now."

Saul exhaled with the crowd and turned to face Bill again.

"But if she did it to herself …," Ishay insisted, "if she wanted this, shouldn't we then just …, … you know …." Her voice trailed off.

"It's up to the Commander," Cottle answered.

"It is?"

"Do you want to tell him you let her die?" Cottle asked.

"Ah." Ishay said. "Right. He didn't respond too well the first time."

The oddest of hopes constricted Bill's chest. "Saul?"

At the uncomfortable wavering of his XO, Bill elbowed his way past him and tramped through the mass of deckhands that opened for him like water before the prow of ship, to the open raptor hatch.

With one foot on the hatch frame he looked inside.

On the raptor deck, in too large a puddle of blood, lay the body of Laura Roslin, limp, sprawled on her back, her hands open as if in surrender.

Bill froze, his breathing high in his chest.

Her eyes were closed, her skin waxen. Blood trickled out of the uneven gash in her throat Ishay tried to keep closed with both of her hands. Cottle kneeled beside her, wrestling with a bandage, straining to stop the bleeding. Laura's blood had soaked the knees his pants.

Bill faltered. It was impossible. He swayed. Saul's hand caught his elbow.

Her hair, once a luminous mass of red waves, was plastered against her head, heavy with her blood. Her face was more ashen than it had been in her last few days in sickbay half a year ago - more ghostly gray than when he'd helped her tie the explosives around her abdomen to destroy the Resurrection Hub - and yet, it lacked the telltale signs of a crippling disease, of a battle lost after months of painful deterioration.

He closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and pinched it painfully. He'd dreamed of her before.

He opened his eyes, slowly.

She was still there. She was here.

Shaking off Saul's hand, he stepped forward, compelled.

Cottle squinted up at him. "Get out of the light," he said.

Bill moved to the side. The hard light of the Hangar Deck drained her of color. Only the blood kept its deep shade of red. Its metallic tang filled his nose and his knees quavered. Not taking his eyes of her, he crouched down at her feet, the back of his knuckles searching for the smooth skin of her ankle.

The contours of her bones, the texture of her skin under his hand, the elegant slant of her legs, the sensual curve of her hips, they left no doubt in his mind that this, this was her. Sudden relief turned his stomach and wiped out the solid grief he'd come to rely on.

He stroked the skin of her ankle with the tips of his finger, and removed her pumps, as she would want to, if she were awake. He grouped the pair neatly together next to the hatch. When he blew his nose, he found his cheeks wet with tears.

Assessing her injured throat, he leaned back against the shuttle wall, caressing her face with his eyes. It was a smooth face, an almost unmarked face. A much too young face.

He froze. This wasn't her.

His Laura had had laugh wrinkles near her eyes, and deep lines of pain near her mouth. She had hidden the signs of her age as good as she could, but not to his loving eyes. His Laura had been killed in the destruction of the Resurrection Hub, six long months ago, ripped to pieces. He withdrew his hand.

This could only be a Cylon copy.

He'd lost her right after he'd found her again. He sat back with a thump.

Laura had been explicit about the possibility of this scenario, excruciatingly clear, and she'd pressed her commands upon him.

 _If you see me again, shoot me._

They had hoped it would never come to this. He'd come to believe that it never would come to it. But here she was. A risk to the Fleet, an enemy agent with unprecedented authority that looked like the former president. There was no choice.

He could not allow it access to his ship, he could not allow its influence in the fleet. He would have to kill it, and he would have to do it sooner rather than later. With every second that passed, it became more painful.

There was no choice.

He raised himself from his crouched down position and stepped to the hatch.

"Give me your side arm," he ordered Mathias.

"Sir?" the marine hesitated.

"Now."

She took her gun and pressed it into his hand. He inspected it, pulled the safeties off and, with an experienced gesture and a forceful snap, fed a bullet into the chamber.

At the sound, Ishay looked up. When she saw the weapon pointed in her direction, she scrambled out of the line of fire, letting go of the Cylon's neck. Blood gushed out of the gash onto the deck.

Cottle grabbled to close the wound. "Get him out of here," he snapped at Saul. "You, come back here!" he ordered Ishay.

"Move aside," Bill commanded the Cottle, sending a fierce look at Ishay to stay where she was.

He impatiently waved his weapon left to right, willing him away.

Medical attention was the last thing this Cylon required, but he would be damned if he would injure the last surgeon of mankind while killing it. "Move!"

The CMO bend forward, half covering the Cylon with his body, fixing Bill with a glare from under his bushy eyebrows. He drew up his shoulders, almost like a bull about to charge.

"Get him the frak out of here," Cottle bit.

Saul's hand grasped Bill's elbow, but Bill stepped forward, closer to his mark. He aimed at the too young face and shut one eye to fixate it. To steer clear of Cottle, he kneeled and found his target, its temple, yes, that would do, that would kill it, a shot there would – -

His eyes drifted to the face he would destroy, the charming arch of her nose, the color of her lips. So much of her was there.

His arm wavered. His hand wavered, and then his gun wavered and he couldn't get a lock, not on her face, not her face. No.

He exhaled, and let gravity pull the gun down.

Cottle exhaled too and beckoned Ishay close with a curt movement of his head.

Bill clenched his jaws. He could shoot a Doral without a blink, he could strangle a Sharon without a second thought. He was a Commander in the Colonial Fleet, a soldier with a long record of battles fought and won. This was just another skin job, maybe the most dangerous skin job the Cylons ever produced, because the minute this one opened its mouth, people would listen.

He knew he would listen.

He had to stop it.

He widened his stance on his knees, took position, closed one eye and aimed at her heart. He would do it in one shot, be merciful and quick about it.

With crushing certainty he knew this was how it was going to be from now on. Every single copy they'd send, he'd have to shoot. There was no other option.

Be quick and merciful.

Her chest, under the layers of her clothing, rose and fell with the steady movement of her breathing, accentuating the gentle curves of her breasts with every inhalation, accentuating the fact that she was alive, still alive, and that she could live on, if he chose so.

He watched her, as he'd done those long days she'd been unconscious in sickbay and the tender nights when she'd slept in his rack; simply watched her chest rise and fall, captivated by the peaceful tranquility and the promise it held, nurturing the hope that she may still be alive in the morning.

He could not shoot her in her breast.

Then where?

The half applied white bandage on her frail neck turned crimson under Cottle's fingers. It was a vile gash. He could just let her bleed out, it would not take long. He wouldn't need to shoot her. She would have done the killing herself. Her choice. Her order. He could wait.

 _She'd done the killing herself._ It hit him.

A Cylon plot would not unfold itself like this. A Cylon agent would not act like this.

President Roslin, however, would do anything to stop a Cylon plot from coming to fruition. And she would do almost anything to prevent Bill from being forced to shoot her.

"Cut it out, Commander." Cottle's harsh voice woke Bill to the doctor's jaded eyes that followed the wavering gun, and to the nurse who watched him warily as she edged back to Cottle's side.

Bill frowned at the gun and dropped his arm.

Saul's moist hand moved over his, taking the weapon with him.

"Get him out of here." Cottle bristled, straightening from his crouched down position. "And get me that stretcher!"

"Come," Saul's voice said near Bill's ear.

Calming hands came to rest on his shoulders. Bill let Saul lead him out of the shuttle. At the hatch he turned and looked down at the Cylon copy of his lover.

He would play it by ear. Maybe he would have to shoot her tomorrow. For now, he would let her live and hear what she had to say to explain her actions.

The crowd parted to let them pass.

"Get back to work," Saul bellowed. "And you," he said to Tyrol, "find out where that raptor came from."

.

* * *

.

[Resurrection Hub]

She awoke in a bath of gooey fluid, and sighed. Apparently, destroying hundreds of Cavil copies had not changed the outcome. He still resurrected her. It was time for a change of tactics.

Cavil's welcome ad become more cynical with every copy of herself that she destroyed. It would have reached a freezing point now. She wondered if retribution was in order, if Cavil would be even more unpleasant than usual.

She waited in silence, her eyes closed, trying to control her breathing, listening. He ought to have spoken up by now. What did he have in store?

"Hey, Laura." A finger touched her upper arm, poking her in a friendly way. Leoben.

She opened her eyes and found Leoben and D'Anna leaning over the edges of her tub, smiling at her, glee in their eyes. She smiled back involuntarily.

"Come," Leoben said, holding up a bath robe.

D'Anna offered her a hand, stabilizing Laura while she rose, her eyes gliding over Laura's body before she handed her a towel. There was not a Cavil in sight.

"Did I get all of him?" Laura asked, breathlessly.

Leoben laughed, helping her into the robe.

"Those were just bodies," D'Anna said. "It was fun to see his face though. John sometimes gets too full of himself."

Leoben kneeled, offering Laura some slippers.

She looked down, baffled.

Leoben smiled up at her and moved the footwear toward her toes as if it was a normal thing to do.

To be taken care of, after Simon's and Cavil's repugnant experiments, drained her resolve, made her feel faint. Hope simmered, as if maybe, after her lonely struggle, after contemplating suicide so consistently, she could now rest a little.

"Thank you," she said.

Leoben rose. "Come," he said, offering her his arm, "it's time you get to see your new quarters."


	5. Chapter 5

[Galactica Sickbay]

When Bill slipped inside the curtained-off section of sickbay, he found doctor Cottle checking the monitors by the side of Laura's bed, rubbing his chin, his skepticism about the findings on the screens evident.

She lay on her back in the bed, cleaned up and dressed in a hospital gown, her neck freshly bandaged. Her hair covered the pillow in a fan of copper curls, accenting the delicacy of her face. She'd a healthy pallor now and even in the harsh light of sickbay, the familiar creases in her face were gone.

She was ten, maybe twenty, years too young and restored to an exquisiteness that took Bill's breath away. There was no doubt this was not the woman he'd escorted to her death - and yet she was unmistakably Laura Roslin.

He walked to the foot of the bed and considered her face and the familiar contours of her body under the blankets. Her eyes were closed, her face relaxed to a peaceful harmony and her breathing was calm and regular, but he knew she was awake. He'd spent too many a night watching over her not to know every ruse she'd developed to pretend she was all right. The absence of the vulnerability that only surfaced when she truly slept was a giveaway.

There would be a knot between her shoulder blades now too, he knew from experience; a knot he'd often massaged away until she'd sighed and snuggled up against him to finally, genuinely doze off.

The curtain opened behind him. Saul took position next to Bill and crossed his arms before his chest as he scrutinized the latest Cylon model. "

Nice new body," Saul said with the same lurid appreciation he'd shown for the pole dancers of Picon. "Great overhaul. I can almost see what you saw in Roslin."

Bill turned his head and caught Saul in a glower. "This is not a whor– " He caught himself and turned his head back to her, anticipating a withering look at his slip, but her eyes remained closed.

"How is she?" he asked Cottle, diverting Saul's attention away from her looks.

"She'll be fine," Cottle said. "We have compensated for the blood loss. She may feel weak for a few days, but not nearly as bad as when she suffered from the cancer."

"Any signs of that?"

"Not a cell. This is a healthy woman. She can outrun you with ease."

"Hmm," Bill said. Running was not the first thing on his mind.

"When will it wake up?" Saul asked.

"She will open her eyes when she is ready," Cottle said.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Saul demanded.

"She is awake," Cottle said.

Saul stared at the woman in the bed. "So it can hear us?"

Cottle rolled his eyes. "I haven't tested her hearing. But, yeah."

"A true Roslin copy then," Saul said. "Stubborn as hell."

"She needs time," Bill took her side reflexively, defending her against Saul's misjudgments as he had before. "She doesn't want to be here, Saul. She tried to kill herself."

"You have gone soft in the head at the sight of it, already," Saul scoffed. "This is not your woman, Bill, this is a Cylon skin job, a hostile agent, programmed by the enemy and possibly sent here to finish the job Valerii botched and to shoot a few extra rounds into you."

For a moment, Bill was back in the CIC. Sharon's hand came up in slow motion, and the bullets ripped their way through his chest. His palm found the long scar under his uniform and followed its path upwards over his chest.

"Maybe she is," he murmured, "but we don't know that." The idea that Laura, any Laura, could shoot him was as unfathomable as the notion that he could shoot her.

"Like hell we don't," Saul groused. "The Cylons will not have sent you a custom made copy of your dead lover to mend your broken heart. If you die, humanity will not survive."

"Everyone is replaceable." Bill didn't know why he even reacted. She would not kill him.

"You cannot believe that Baltar and I will lead mankind to safety." Saul persisted.

"The Gods help us," Cottle said.

The three men stared at the immobile woman in the bed. "I

need this bed for real cases," Cottle said. "There's no reason for her to take up space in sickbay."

"I can have her transported to my quarters," Bill said.

Saul snorted.

"Maybe we should ask the lady's opinion on that," Cottle said.

"Let it cool its heels in the brig." Saul said.

"The brig?" Bill squinted at Saul.

"It's suicidal. In your quarters there are tons of things it could use to off itself with. Do you want that?"

Bill slowly shook his head.

"Then put it in the brig."

"Hmmpf," Bill said. Throwing her in the brig hadn't been a good idea the first time and it would set their new relationship off on a different foot than he wanted.

"It's a Cylon, Bill. If President Roslin were here, this copy would already be on its way to an airlock," Saul insisted.

"But this is Laura Roslin, too." It had to be true. She killed herself once again to protect the Fleet.

"They are counting on you to believe that," Saul said, "but we don't even frakking know that it's Roslin."

"Look at her!"

"For all I know, this could be a Leoben occupying Roslin's body."

Bill froze, sickened. "Could it be?" he asked Cottle.

"How would I know? The DNA is Roslin's. The soul is not my field."

Cottle took a long drag at his cigarette. "Given the way she almost garroted herself," he continued, "I'd say some of her old radical resolve is in there."

"Radical or not, she bungled the job," Saul cut in. "So maybe she isn't Roslin after all."

The doctor shrugged.

"Roslin," Saul insisted, "would have spoken up by now."

She would have, Bill had to agree. "She's a politician, she can bide her time," he rationalized nevertheless, unwilling to face the other scenario.

"It's manipulating us already!" Saul sneered. "It's the Cylon way, Bill. They get under your skin. We should airlock it before it speaks."

"I agree." The concurrence was delivered in a sophisticated alto voice by the woman on the bed, its flat vowels Roslin's presidential hallmark.

"And _now_ it speaks," Saul said triumphantly. "We should have threatened to airlock it sooner!"

Bill stumbled towards the side of the bed, drawn to the sound that was unmistakably hers.

Laura's familiar aged eyes were out of place in the fresh young face. They erased the last of Bill's doubts. Relief rippled through him. Even though she regarded him with apprehension and detachment, this was her. He took her hand in his, gently caressing it.

"Stop it," she demanded tersely and retracted her hand.

Bill stepped backwards, stung, and considered her anew.

"Not your standard Roslin reaction?" Saul snickered. "Dress the thing, Major, and I'll send a couple of marines to escort this Cylon to the brig."

"We were discussing airlocks, gentlemen," Laura said impassively, her eyes fixed on Saul now.

"What about them?" Saul asked with a cheerful leer, almost as if he anticipated the pleasure of personally pulling the lever. His flippancy grated Bill.

"I want you to install the basic practice throughout the Fleet," Laura addressed Saul, "that every copy of Roslin that shows up, will be airlocked immediately, and preferably," she looked pointedly at Bill, "before the Commander here sets eyes on her. Can I count on you, Colonel?"

"Oh hell, yes, you can count on me," Saul agreed readily. He offered her a hand. "Shall we?" Then he halted and looked at her properly. "Every copy?" he asked.

"You don't think they'll stop with me, do you, Colonel?" Laura said, "Surely you're not as naive as that."

Saul straightened, irked by the offhand disqualification.

"There'll be others," Roslin continued. "Waves of others. Before long you'll be up to your eyebrows in Roslins."

Bill shuddered and sat down hard on the bedside chair, struggling to breathe, the world whirling leisurely around him.

Cottle turned towards him, studying him with professional watchfulness, and picked up his wrist to take his pulse.

"We can't have _that_." Laura pointed at Bill. "Do you understand, Colonel?" She fixed Saul in her stare. "We cannot have him unhinged like this every time the Cylons choose to send a Roslin copy. It's a threat to the survival of the Fleet."

Saul gawked at her. "You _are_ Roslin." He stepped away from the bed, eying her apprehensively, before turning to his friend, checking him for damage.

"I am a Cylon copy with an unknown program. I urge you to eliminate that risk."

"Not so fast, lady," Saul said.

"There's no time to lose," she insisted.

"Not until you're fully debriefed," Saul said. "We need to know more. What others? How many? What can you tell us about the Cylon position? About their plan? Is there a new Resurrection Ship? Where is it?"

Good questions, all of them, Bill acknowledged. Saul was ever a skillful interrogator, and doubly so under pressure.

Laura sighed and closed her eyes again.

"Every second," she said, "every second this continues, this becomes more painful for him. And for me, incidentally. He should not see me, if it is only to lose me again. And I would rather not savor life only to die again. The sooner you end this, the sooner the pain will stop for the both of us." There had crept a hint of pleading in her voice.

Bill found his hand was covering hers, stroking it soothingly. "It's you," he murmured. The weight that had settled in his stomach six months ago dissolved as thick ice after a long winter. His fingers told him she was here again; her words convinced him it was really her. He had not lost her after all.

Laura tensed under his caress and she fixed Saul in a blistering glare.

"Too late, Saul Tigh. Too late, already."


	6. Chapter 6

[Resurrection Hub]

Cavil hadn't stopped Leoben and D'Anna from installing her in her own apartment, nor did he call her back to his lab for experiments. Laura enjoyed the reprieve.

She grew accustomed to he colossal centurion that followed her around. After some time she realized he was not so much her guard as her valet. He knew his way around the ship, and though he didn't speak, he followed orders and showed her the way. She called him Buster.

Skilled as she'd become in self-destruction, suicide had always been her least favorite alternative. She'd been taught political bartering and scheming by the best. Maybe she could help Bill from within. As a Board Member, she had new options to exert her influence, Leoben and D'Anna insisted for reasons she could not start to comprehend.

The Cylon power structure proved to be more complex than anticipated. On the face of it, every Cylon had an equal vote in the Board. Cavil, however, presided over the meetings and although he could not wield a veto, he proved quite able to keep subjects from being tabled.

"He's number one," a Sharon told Laura, when she mentioned it, quasi in passing.

"But why?"

"He was the first one. The oldest," Sharon said.

"Did he create the rest of you?" As Cavil had fine-tuned Roslin copies for months now, it didn't seem an outlandish idea.

"No!" Sharon looked aghast.

"Then who created you?" Laura asked, realizing she didn't know. Humans had created the first Cylons, but the new models clearly exceeded human technology. It was unlikely they had been created by the chrome toasters that withdrew from the first war.

Sharon excused herself, ill at ease.

Well, well, now. 

* * *

[Galactica Corridors]

Saul marched behind the four marines that escorted the Cylon to the brig. If it had been up to him this Roslin copy would have been shackled at its ankles, wrists and neck in the same way the Valerii skin job was when she was transported through the ship. There was no telling what this model was up to or capable of.

It walked calmly between the marines, its eyes downcast, and its head low, as if it tried to shield itself from view, to make itself invisible.

It was not long before Saul understood its reasons. People stood, people stared, and, after the detail had passed, a wave of whispers swelled up behind them. He regretted transporting it during the day shift, but it was too late to change that now.

"Move along," he grumbled at gawking crew members. "Nothing to see here." But people didn't seem to hear him after they caught sight of the frakking Roslin Cylon. "Move along, I said!"

At a quiet spot, the thing stopped and turned towards Saul. He knew it. He knew it would turn nasty as soon as it could. All Cylons were the same.

"Move," he bellowed. "Drag it if you must," he instructed the marines. The solid men gripped its thin arms, almost lifting it off the deck. Good. It could deploy less strength that way.

"Excuse me, Colonel," it said in that overly polite tone Roslin had often used on him. "Excuse me," as if it wasn't forcefully lifted by four marines, "wouldn't it be a better idea to choose less crowded corridors?"

"No talking, Gods damn it."

"You'll have another media disaster on your hands," it remarked matter-of-factly.

"Frak the media." The last thing he needed were lessons from a skin job.

"At least let me cover myself," it persisted. "A large coat, a cloak or something like that."

He smirked and turned to one of the marines. "Get me a sack." If it wanted to torture itself and stumble in the dark, he would be the last to stop it.

The marines let the Cylon down. The soldier saluted and jogged away.

"Now keep moving," Saul ordered. He wanted it out of the corridors as soon as possible.

"That is not a good idea," it insisted. "Let's wait here."

And there you had the plan. Reduce the detail, and then delay. Who did it think he was? A frakking rookie? "Move!" he shouted.

The small group set itself into motion again.

From around a corner Sarah Porter and three of her Gemenon aides appeared. Religious idiots, the lot of them.

"Madame President!" the Porter woman cried out. She hurried towards the Cylon, her arms outstretched toward it.

Saul heard the Cylon groan.

"Move aside!" he ordered the Gemenons. He could just as well have ordered Starbuck to act as an adult, for the lack of effect it had.

"Madam President!" Sarah Porter planted herself squarely in the middle of the corridor. "Is it you?"

The Porter woman knew she was immune for Saul's wrath, wrapped in her status as Representative of the Quorum. Saul resented her for it.

The Cylon shook its head. "I'm not her, Sarah."

Hearing it say her name, lighted up the Gemenonese. "You were dead and you have been reborn," the Quorum member concluded in awe. "The Book of Joshua said the savior would be resurrected. Praise be the -."

"Don't get excited," Saul interrupted her brusquely. "All Cylons are resurrected. The Gods have little to do with it. Unless you want to worship i _the Cylons_ /i now."

The Gemenon ignored him. "Praise be the Gods that have elevated you amongst us, as they said they would." The delegation sank to its knees. "Please bless us, Madame President."

The Cylon stood motionless. It clasped its hands behind its back. "I can't, Sarah, I really can't."

The marine came jogging back at them, a crudely woven brown sack in his hand. He ran past that journalist woman, Biers, who leaned against the bulkhead and studied them from a distance, a snooty smile on her lips. It would hit the news. The Cylon had been right. Saul looked around for her cameraman. He was not there.

The marine handed the sack to Saul who, with a swift movement, pulled it over the Cylon's head. "There," he said with a sigh of relief. "Now move." He pushed it roughly in its back.

It lost its balance and stumbled forward into group of the kneeling Gemenons. They scattered before it, like chickens for a dog. Saul grinned, following its uncertain strides through the corridor.

Now it was camouflaged, he expected no further incidents and there was no further reason for him to walk all that way to the brig and back. "Get that thing to the brig!" he ordered the marines, "And report to me when you have completed it."

He halted and let the group march on. When they rounded a corner and disappeared out of sight, he bent over and pulled the flask out of his sock.

He'd earned a drink.


	7. Chapter 7

[Resurrection Hub]

Cavil didn't stop the Twos and Threes from installing their own Roslin copy in a segment of the Hub, nor did he call that particular specimen back to his lab for further experiments.

That strand of Roslins, strand 36, was flawed. It had seemed a good idea at the time to add some of his own programming to make her more machine, less human, but she'd inherited his ruthless determination too and his mistake had cost him two-hundred and seventy-four mature bodies.

He would go back to strand 32, of which one specimen had even made it to the Fleet. D'Anna Biers reported that it was kept alive in iGalactica's/i brig. A most promising result.

For now, having their own toy-Roslin would distract the Twos and Threes from his modifications of her other strands. He would, of course, destroy the 36 later. He'd ordered a centurion to follow her, pending his orders.  
.

* * *

.

[Galactica's Brig]

When Bill entered the brig, the woman looked up at him. Her eyes were impassive, her face the unresponsive mask of presidential detachment that he knew so well from her first months in office.

Her posture bespoke casual familiarity with executive power and a ripeness that comes with age and suffering from a devastating illness. It was a striking dissonance on a woman this young and healthy.

Interested in her story but unwilling to force it out of her no matter what Saul insisted upon, he smiled at her, a pacifying opening move.

She turned her head to the wall.

He kept his position in the doorway and waited; his eyes roaming her body with a freedom he would have kept in check if she'd seen it. The real feast to his eyes was the suppleness of her movements, a clear indication that she was, finally, free of the pain that had debilitated her.

It was evident she was not his Laura, and yet, even as she turned her head away, she i _was_ /i her in all the details of her wordless dissatisfaction.

"Laura?" He would not call her by any other name.

Her shoulders dropped. "Please leave, Commander."

Though she did not even turn her head to deliver the dismissal, her voice nourished his soul like a downpour revitalizing parched dirt. He could listen to her reject him for a very long time, if those were the only words she spoke.

"No good can come of this," she said.

"I thought you might be bored," he ventured.

She snorted softly.

"I've been in the brig once or twice myself," he elaborated, "so I know."

She almost turned her head at that admission. He saw her catch herself and he smiled. Maybe he could bring her out of this shell after all.

"Please don't do this," she said. "It'll hurt all the more, later."

"I'm not going to let you kill yourself, Laura," he told her. "I can't."

She turned her head and looked at him like she had when she first ordered him to shoot her, six months ago: all her presidential power behind it; the unspoken certainty of his devotion and loyalty apparent in her eyes; her appeal an undisguised demand.

"You promised," she said.

Her sudden acknowledgement of his existence, and the transformation into her old self, unhinged him with its hint of the possibility of having her back, really having her back. She was there. His Laura was there, hiding behind the mask.

He stepped forward, from the shadows into the light, towards her. "I didn't," he said. "You asked. I didn't promise. I couldn't. Not then, not now."

She studied him, her eyes flicking over his face as if looking for a fissure in his defenses, an opening for negotiation. When she found only his dogged resolve, she sighed and turned her head away. "Please go."

"In case you get bored in brigs too," he took up his original subject, "I brought you something."

He held the book out to her and waited, but she didn't turn again. He entered the cell properly and walked to the cot.

"Don't," she started, rising and hurrying away from him, her back consistently between them, as a barricade she had withdrawn behind.

He placed the book on the cot, turned and left.

Out of view, in the Observation Room, he watched the monitors as she tentatively returned to the bed and looked down at the book.

"Oh, Bill." Her sigh quivered over the speakers.

Spoken with affection, his name carved through him like a blunt and rusty blade.

She picked up the book, stared at it a long while, caressed the cover, exhaled audibly and pressed it against herself, softly swaying to and fro.

He sat, paralyzed by the distress he'd inadvertently wrought. He couldn't go back without making things worse.


	8. Chapter 8

[Resurrection Hub]

"Is Number One the creator of all other models?"

After the Eight had balked at the question alone, Laura casually brought it up with D'Anna, during one of her introductions to Cylon politics.

"Hardly," D'Anna leered. "If he _had_ been, we all would have been centurions. He hates the limits of the human body."

Laura projected _Galactica_ 's corridors on the walls of the hub as they walked, though the sounds of Buster trailing her with his clanking steps, added some trepidation to the battlestar's atmosphere.

"You don't like him much, do you?" Laura said.

"He tampers with Cylon programming."

"With mine, certainly, but with yours?"

D'Anna pursed her lips at Laura's naivety.

"But how do you know your programming is changed?" Laura asked. She had to know her own programming before she could stop it.

"I don't. I just see the changes in the others."

Laura hid her disappointment. "Really?"

"Some subjects become unspeakable taboos, for no good reason, overnight"

"Like what?"

"Well," D'Anna laughed, "suicide, for one thing."

"To no avail, apparently." Laura deadpanned. She had proven that point sufficiently.

D'Anna cocked her head. "You're alive now, aren't you?"

Laura stilled. The Three was right. She was alive now longer than ever as a Cylon. Was she succumbing to Cavil's programming?

She parked the thought for later consideration. "What else has changed?" she asked.

The Three looked away. Her mouth twisted as if she was considering what she could tell Laura. "Our numbering is odd," she finally said.

"Odd?"

"We were numbered in order of creation."

The Ones even looked the oldest. It made sense. "So?"

"There is no Seven," D'Anna said.

Laura considered all the models she had seen: the old Ones, the Leoben Twos, the Threes, the doctor Fours, the Doral Fives, the blonde Sixes, the Sharon Eights. No Sevens. Not ever.

"What happened?"

"We don't know. But, that's the point. We Threes are older then the Sevens, we ought to have known. That's why we believe the Ones have tampered with our recollections."

"We?"

"The Twos, Threes and Sixes."

A faction. Laura hid her smile. It was always nice to have factions on the other side. She changed the projection into Richard's old office, a better place for political maneuvering than _Galactica_.

"And you accept that?" she asked benignly. Cavil would come to regret having tampered with Laura Roslin.

Three rolled her eyes but kept silent.

Richard's large presidential office was empty of other Cylons but for Buster waiting in the door opening. Laura waved her fingers at him in an almost imperceptible motion, acknowledging him in much the same way she would have done with Billy. The Centurion cocked his head and then twiddled his fingers in an imitation of her gesture. Laura flashed him a grin.

"Why did you want to call me Thirteen, initially?" Laura asked. "It angered Cavil as if you'd called him John."

D'Anna looked about them then moved them both to the middle of the large room, as far away from walls as possible.

"It's not something we are supposed to discuss," she said.

Laura nodded. "He is the one in charge," she feigned understanding, driving the wedge in a bit deeper.

"He is not!"

"Whoever makes the rules is in charge," Laura said as if it was a well-known truth, not worth stressing. "And since you follow his orders by not talking about it..." She stepped back and watched the fire eating at the fuse until it reached the Cylon.

"There are twelve models," D'Anna said.

Laura nodded. There had been an anonymous note not long after the attacks, stating the same.

"We know the seven models that are here. The other five we have never seen," D'Anna said.

"Then how do you know they are supposed to exist?"

Claiming unseen things was a dubious assertion at best. Laura at least had _seen_ the snakes two and ten and had felt them crawling over her hands before she started contemplating the relevance of Pythia.

"I saw them," D' Anna said. "Briefly."

"Where?"

"In the space between death and resurrection."

"Oh." Not a good sign. And here she'd thought the Leobens were the ones that had specialized in metaphysical doubletalk.

"You don't believe me?" D'Anna asked.

Laura made a noncommittal movement with her head.

"You have resurrected more than most of us," D'Anna said.

"I have?"

D'Anna nodded impatiently. "What did you see in those last few seconds?"

Bill smiling and beckoning. The boat over the Styx nearing the far side, with her mother clear in the distance. An opera house where Valerii roamed the corridors and five white draperies hung from a balcony behind the podium where Six and Hera went to. Five?

"What do _you_ see?" Laura asked.

"The Five, standing on a balcony in white light."

"White drapes hanging down?"

"Yes!" D'Anna whispered. "Did you see their faces?"

Laura shook her head. She wasn't even sure if she'd seen people at all. "Did you?"

The Three looked dejected.

The thought of five whole Cylon lines at large was both a horror and an opportunity. Maybe if Laura found them, they could break the vote in the Board.

"Then where are they? Where would you go look for them?" Laura asked.

D'Anna shrugged. "We don't know. Kobol first, probably."

"Who's 'we'?"

"The Twos, Threes and Sixes, mainly."

The same group again. Almost half of the models. Promising.

"What about Sh – the Eights?" Laura asked.

D'Anna shrugged. "It's an unreliable model. Weak. Emotional. She wants to be loved. Her opinions shift accordingly. "

 _She wants to be loved._ Laura smiled. In politics and war, love was allowed.  
.

* * *

.

[ _Galactica'_ s Brig]

When Saul entered the cell, an iron chair in his hand, he found it sitting on the cot with a straight back, its head high, and its legs crossed primly, as if it was hosting a godsdammed Presidential tea party.

Roslin had always tried to impress people with her posture, he thought, which wasn't so strange since she was a frakking school teacher posing as a president. He hadn't fallen for it when Roslin lived, and he was not about to fall for it now that she had become a Cylon.

"Colonel Tigh," it acknowledged him as if he'd just entered the presidential office, hat in hand.

"Madame P-." He swallowed the honorific and scowled at it.

"Sit down, please and let me brief you," it said.

He wanted to snarl that he would decide for himself when he would sit down, but he had no intention to stand around waiting for it. So he sat.

"You do understand that I want to end my presence here as soon as possible?" it asked.

"You and me both."

"Good. Then let's start. Is there anything you want to know in particular?"

He raised his hand to tick off his issues on his fingers.

"First off," she waved it away, "I need to inform you that D'Anna Biers, the journalist, is a Cylon. I saw her at the Resurrection Hub. She is model number Three. You better arrest her and all her copies in the Fleet."

Saul wanted to protest that he was the one who decided who to arrest and who not, but there was no point. He raised himself from the chair, walked to the phone in the corridor and barked his instructions.

"Thank you," the Cylon said when he got back.

"Anyone else we need to know about?" he asked.

"I can talk you through the faces of most of them. There are several we hadn't identified yet, six months ago."

"Start from the top."

"Number One is an older man, Cavil. He is in charge, even though they pretend to be a democracy."

"He is the head of the snake?"

"Unfortunately, cutting it off won't work."

"We will see," Saul said.

"There's a Quorum of sorts. Every model has a say. That Board will survive the destruction of the Cavils."

"Are you a member of that Quorum?"

"I am."

"Then why are you not working our case there instead of wracking havoc here?"

"I had no choice."

"You do the Cylon's bidding then?"

It looked as if it stepped in a puddle of vomit.

"Trying to put yourself in a better light, are you?" Saul said. "What did you do for him that you cannot talk about?"

"I was a POW, Colonel. Use your imagination."

Saul blinked and gave it a once over. Yes, if the articles of Colonization had not forbidden it, he could see what predicament it would be in.

"The Godfrey Woman that accused Baltar, was a Cylon too, number Six, and Baltar is her human liaison, a co-conspirator of the Cylons in the attack on the Colonies."

"Gaius frakking Baltar?"

"Yes."

"I cannot arrest the President of the Colonies on your say so."

"I understand," it said. "And no one wants Zarek for President. Please just inform the Commander. He needs to know."

Saul nodded. "What else?"

"There are several Resurrection Ships. The one I destroyed six months ago is not the only one. There is a central Hub, connecting them all, coordinating all resurrection. "

"Where is it now?"

"I don't know. The Raptor jumped more than a few times before I got here, and the Hub itself jumps randomly too"

"So how did you plan to get back after completing your mission?" Did she think he was stupid?

"This is a one way trip, Colonel. I'm not supposed to survive."

It made sense this one was dispensable. "How many Roslin copies are there?"

It hesitated again. A telltale sign if ever there was one. "Well?" he pressed. "Must we hunt all the ships of the fleet for copies of you?"

"That's unlikely. I was always alone, one prototype at the time. I do expect Cavil will have another one of me from storage now, to improve the model."

Funny that even Cylons saw room for improvement in Roslin.

"Improve how?"

"I killed myself thirty-two times, before they created this strand which survived long enough to reach the Fleet. Cavil's is making progress programming us. I expect the next copies will be more amendable to Cavil's plans."

"Some progress!"

"And then there's the programming. Once the Roslins stop killing themselves, it will be easier to embed a program in us, much like Sharon Valerii."

"To kill the Old Man?"

"To harm the Fleet," it said.

"Not to kill the Commander?"

"I don't know."

"Are you programmed now?"

It hesitated.

He knew its tells now. "Well?" he growled, leaning forward menacingly.

"I don't know."

"Like hell you don't," he snarled and stood. He wouldn't fall for a trick this obvious.

"I don't know."

Stubborn as hell, even as a Cylon. But he had it now. Where he could never persuade Roslin, he could beat the truth out of this skin job. If it was so eager to die, he would help it. He raised his hand.

It cringed, staring at him wide eyed, perplexed, lifting its arm in defense.

"Should have thought of that earlier," he sneered.

"Colonel Tigh!" Bill's voice stopped him.

Saul turned to the door.

Bill stood there, motionless, just outside the cell. "Desist!" he said. "Stand down."

Saul lowered his hand and walked over to Bill. He should have known the Old Man wasn't far from the copy of his woman. "You can't be serious," Saul said. "We need to know its programming."

Looking over Saul's shoulder to the Cylon, Bill said: "She doesn't know."

"And how do we know that, if we don't force it to spill its guts? All of it! It's a hostile, Bill. A centurion with a pretty face."

"She has told us the names, the numbers and faces of all Cylon models. She's been helpful in thwarting the Cylon scheme so far. If she says she doesn't know her programming, she doesn't know."

"You've gotten soft in the head, Bill. If this was a Leoben you would not hesitate to strangle him, just on the off chance he would say something useful."

"This is not a Leoben."

"This one is five times more effective than a Leoben," Saul said, "if you react to it like that."

Bill shrugged. "I made my decision"

"Well, it's your call," he said grudgingly.

"Gentlemen," the Cylon said.

Saul turned to face it.

"Yes?" Bill said.

"Now that I've told you everything I know, don't you think it's time…" she made a movement with her head, indicating her departure. "Quid pro quo, gentlemen. An airlock would be nice."

"No," Bill said.

"A piece of rope then, or a knife?"

"No," Bill said.

"I don't suppose you have been able to convince Doc Cottle to inject me with something smooth and painless?"

"No," Bill said.

She turned to Saul. "I'm a threat to the Fleet and its Commander. You can see that, don't you, Colonel Tigh?"

"A blind man can see that."

"Then help me remove this copy from his sight."

Saul stepped towards the skin job. "No problem."

"No," Bill said.

Saul turned to Bill.

"Don't even think about it," Bill said.

"Bill!" they said in unison.

"No."

"Then there's nothing more to say," it said and turned its back on them.

Bill seemed to stare at the Cylon's back as if that would persuade it to turn towards him.

It ignored him, of course.

"Come," Saul said after a minute. "Let's get us a drink."


	9. Chapter 9

[Resurrection Hub, Hybrid Bay]

"Mists of dreams drip along the nascent echo and love no more. End of Line. Diagnostic functions within parameters, repeat, the choir is of a waiting no more; a road awash with fragrant tenderness. Heat exchanger capacity reduced to the allegories. Repairs in progress. The end of the arboreal hierarchy calls forth the doubling of hazes. End of line."

Laura stared at the woman in the tub. Thick black tubes connected her to the ship and she didn't acknowledge their presence. Laura didn't even know if she was aware of their presence.

"She is the ship," Leoben said, crouching near the tub. He tapped the metallic deck. "She knows everything."

Laura squatted down next to him. He held out a hand to steady her, patting her with softly as he did.

She tried not to withdraw and forced her body to relax under his touch. She needed allies. "She's number Seven?"

"Sevens do not exist." It least Leoben didn't blanch at the question. "She's the Hybrid."

"If Sevens don't exist, why call Sharon Eight?" She wondered how far she could push this model and how much it actually knew.

He shrugged. "The world has currents that surpass our understanding."

Right. "You sound like the hybrid," she chided him softly.

"The Hybrid speaks the words of God," he beamed, pleased with her assessment.

The woman in the tub turned her head toward Laura.

"The artist was beloved above the oldest," she said. "Rain follows rooms follows comets. There's no end to envy until the underbrush crumbles to ash. Terminate Line. Amniotic cleans emotion. Machines are adjusted. The mother grieves, knowing and knowing not, lost herself more than her son. End of line."

"What do you mean?" Laura asked, but the hybrid turned her head back, and gazed in front of her again.

"What does it mean?" she asked Leoben.

"She remembers," Leoben said pensively. "She remembers the Sevens." He stared at Laura without seeing her, glowering as he processed the new data, less the mild philosopher now, more a hardened marine ready for action.

"Who," she pushed quietly, "is the oldest that was loved less?"

His jaw clenched when realization hit home. He looked at her now, studying her with his too clever eyes. Was he aware of what she was doing?

"Who," Laura boldly pressed on, "is the grieving mother?" Why would Cylons have a mother to begin with?

Leoben shook his head and rose. "Beware where you tread, Laura, you can step into the river, but will you be able to leave its flow when you want to, or will the prophet drown in the currents she evoked?" He walked away.

"The conservation schedule is operational," the hybrid said. "No faint hearted wears an eternal mask. Drains are mandatory. End of Line."

While Laura shifted through the words, and wondered if the hybrid was warning her, Buster extended his hand to help her up from her crouched down position. She took it, closing her fingers over his metallic ones.

"Thank you, Buster."

.

* * *

.

[ _Galactica's_ Brig]

She caught the kid's hesitant movements before he entered her cell.

"Billy," she breathed.

She looked up at him when he came in, and she tried to radiate friendliness, allowing him to see her in this new form, giving him time to adjust.

"Madam President?" he asked uncertainly.

"You know I'm not that," she kindly chided him.

"It's good to see you." His eyes were wide with hope.

"It's good to see you too."

"The Fleet is afloat with rumors."

She had been afraid of that. "What do they say?"

"That you're not dead, that you probably never were, that you're a prisoner of the military, a victim of a coup, and that Baltar is just a puppet for a military dictatorship."

"Hah!" How ironic that Bill would be cast as the villain, again, while it was Baltar who was colluding with the Sixes. "How is Baltar taking that?"

"Staring into nothingness, talking to thin air, as usual, Mada -" He swallowed. "What shall I call you?" he asked.

She considered it. What was her name now? "Call me Laura." In the end it was easier to go with what he knew.

He shook his head. "I couldn't."

She raised her brows at his reticence. "The Cylons call me Thirteen," she offered tentatively.

"Mada - ?" Now she'd shocked him.

"I _am_ a Cylon, Billy."

"I know. It's just – ," he hesitated. "It's still you."

"I feel like me too, but I know I'm not."

"How _do_ you feel?"

"Fine. I feel really fine, Billy. This body has never been touched by cancer, and it feels much, much younger." She smiled despite herself.

"It is," he admitted readily, "much younger." He blushed.

"Oh." She grinned at him. "Come sit," she beckoned him to the cot.

He tentatively moved towards her.

"What went wrong?" he asked, when she sat down beside him.

"Wrong?"

"With the mission against the Resurrection Ship. We thought you were..."

"I don't know, Billy," she said. "There _was_ an explosion."

"There was?"

"Oh, yes." She grimaced. "I did set off the bomb." Her hand went to her abdomen where the first flesh had been ripped out of her.

"Then, what went wrong?" the boy persisted.

She shook her head. "I don't know. It went black. The bomb was powerful enough to take out a ship, so I should have been sprinkled through the galaxy. Then again," she said interjected, "maybe not all of me was, because here I am."

She saw the boy's mind working to find a solution and raised her hand to stop him. She had tried and not found it, so how could he?

He eyed her uncertainly, and then acquiesced. "What will you do now?" he asked. "Regain the Presidency?"

She laughed. "Unlikely."

Would she tell him of the other copies that would come and that could all exert a similar claim for the Presidency? Should she tell him of her suicide plans? Better not.

"You're a Cylon now," he nodded in understanding. "Maybe not the best reference to win the elections."

She smiled winningly. "Exactly."

"Can I get you anything?" Billy asked.

She smiled fondly at him, remembering how he'd kept asking that during her illness.

"They take good care of me here."

"Oh." He seemed disappointed not to be able to assist her in any way. _Am I still your aide_? lay unspoken between them.

"There's something you could do for me, though," she offered.

The boy looked at her expectantly.

"Could you find me a jumping rope?"

He stared at her. "What?"

"I'm cooped up in here, doing nothing. This young body is far more energetic than the old one, Billy. Physical exercise will do me good"


	10. Chapter 10

[Resurrection Hub, Cavil's Lab]

The idea was revolutionary, brilliant even, and in fact, his very own. Building a compliant Roslin model was easy: simply replace her brain with one of a more docile subject.

Cavil observed Roslin strand 39 in her resurrection tub.

Her eyes were still closed, but she lay down differently than the models that worked on a Roslin operating system. Even unconscious this new strand stretched out as if lying down was an unnatural thing to do.

Which it was, of course, for the centurion brain that operated this body.

Not a promising beginning.

.

* * *

.

[ _Galactica's_ brig]

Gaius's eyes roamed her body. She was younger and more stunningly beautiful than he remembered, more stunningly beautiful, in fact, than a human could possibly be. Had she always had those superb legs or had aesthetic enhancements been added in the process of duplicating her? Had someone added a little bit of Six here and there?

And then those boobs. Gaius swallowed. Perfection had been added to this model. The Cylons had outdone themselves. Her prison outfit didn't do her justice at all. If only he could find an excuse to ask her to undress. Maybe some scientific research, he was a doctor after all. People undressed for doctors without hesitation, didn't they? But what pretext? What research?

Then again, he was the President of the Colonies, and she was a mere prisoner. Maybe he could simply order Roslin to undress. Compared to Cain's treatment of Six that was a benign demand to make of a Cylon. Yes, maybe he could simply order it. Though, only when the Commander wasn't anywhere nearby. Gaius was not sure how the brusque military leader would respond to this new version of his lover - he had incarcerated her after all - but he'd have to be a geriatric case to not appreciate the flawlessness of this young body.

Roslin winked at him.

His private Six, in a figure-hugging red dress, pulled at his sleeve. "Gaius!"

Gaius brushed her hand away, his attention on Roslin. Had she just winked?

"Gaius," Six insisted.

"What?!" He turned towards her, exasperated.

She pulled him away from the bed Roslin sat on, and shoved him towards the far of corner.

"Hey!" he protested.

"She sees me," Six said.

"Nonsense, no one sees you. You do not exist." He turned back to the bed.

"She blinked at me," Six maintained. "She sees me!"

"Don't be ridiculous, she winked at me."

Six snorted.

"Women do wink at me, you know," Gaius huffed. He moved his hand through his hair to accentuate his superior features. "They do."

"Laura Roslin," Six said with quiet conviction, "wouldn't wink at you, even if you were the last man in the Fleet."

Gaius felt affronted and taken aback - until he realized the implications. "You are right, this is not Laura Roslin," he retook himself; "this is a Cylon copy, and she winked at me."

Six rolled her eyes. "Shall we ask her?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Gaius said tersely. "What would I say? 'Did you wink at this figment of my imagination?' That'll be the day."

"I'll do the asking." Six said evenly.

Gaius stared at her, and then laughed relieved. "Of course, dear. Please, be my guest."

.

.

[Observation Room]

From his post behind the view screen, Bill had seen Baltar drool over Laura, until it had become almost impossible not to order the marines in to forcefully remove either Baltar or Laura from the brig. The President had walked away from Laura just in time to go talk to himself in the corner of the cell, his back towards the prisoner.

Bill rubbed his eyes, his impatience with the incoherent intellectual reaching new levels, his irritation mounting. The only consolation he had, was that the man blocked Zarek from occupying the position of President, and thus saved Bill from that far shoddier partnership.

He saw Baltar walk back to Laura's cot and studying her silently.

"Yes, I can see you," Laura said.

Baltar turned white and staggered back.

"That's impossible!" he stammered.

Bill considered rescuing Laura from the man again. Did he actually believe himself to be invisible? No wonder he wandered mindlessly through the corridors, watching the bulkheads grow wings.

Bill pressed the 'record' button and sat back. A little leverage over Baltar may go a long way.

.

.

[ _Galactica_ 's Brig]

"Shouldn't I be able to see you?"

Roslin blinked at the Six and frowned. She had been stumped by Baltar's audacity to openly consort with a Six on board of _Galactica_. Before he entered with the Six in tow, she'd been stewing about his Cylon alliances and about his potential collaborative presidential policies, not about invisible Cylons he'd smuggled aboard the one ship the whole fleet depended upon for protection.

"No one else does," Baltar insisted. He sat down in the chair Bill often used.

"Really?" She tried to hide her alarm and failed. A stealth Six changed everything. Why hadn't she heard of this at the Hub? How could she have been too preoccupied with killing herself to miss this vital piece of information?

This sexy red clad vamp certainly was different from the straitlaced and indignant Godfrey woman that had visited _Galactica_ to accuse Baltar. Was she his Cylon advisor, the brain behind his policies? Laura could see how the Six had the president wound around her delicate fingers.

"How come no one sees you?"

"Well, _I_ can, obviously," Baltar said. "And now you can too." He let it linger while his eyes caressed her form. "We must be connected somehow."

Even without Six's eye roll, Laura saw Baltar's mind slither into the possibilities of threesomes. She shuddered. She was a prisoner. What policies had the President developed regarding skin jobs?

The Six chortled. "He thought," she smirked, "that I was a figment of his imagination."

"Well, what are you?" Laura asked.

"I'm an angel from God sent to guide him and you."

Yeah right, Laura thought. And why would the inventor of the Cylons want to send a personal messenger to a human genius? Brotherly love between masterminds? Hardly plausible.

"Are you a Cylon too, then?" she asked him. One of the structural flaws of Baltar's Cylon Detector had been that it would never have exposed Baltar himself, even if it _had_ worked.

She had expected a flat-out denial, but he shrugged and glanced up at the Six. "I don't know. Sometimes I hope I am."

The Six wrapped herself around Baltar. "Of course we are connected," she assured him, pressing her breast against his face.

Baltar, distracted by Caprica's nipple brushing his cheek, absentmindedly stroked the long leg the blonde was offering him. His gaze never left Laura.

"Never mind her," Six said, turning Baltar's head towards her breast. "She is on the side of the angels now, too."

Baltar looked up at the sumptuous woman that loomed over him, smoothing her body against his side. "She is?" he asked like a child looking for reassurance.

"Of course she is." Six soothingly stroked his hair. He closed his eyes, a regal pet receiving the patting he deserved.

Laura sat back. Baltar gazing dreamily into nothingness had become a familiar sight in the last year of her life. Adding this woman to that picture changed the entire significance of it. Had she been there all along? Had he gotten away with cuddling her in public ever since the Exodus?

"Do you want us to call you Thirteen?" The Six disentangled herself from Baltar, settled herself next to Laura on the cot and stroked Laura's knee. "Or do you prefer a different name? You are, after all, the first of your model to make it to the human fleet. Quite a milestone for the Thirteens. The Ones will be pleased."

"What are Cavil's plans with my model?" Laura asked. If the Six knew what was happening on the Hub, maybe she knew this too.

"Don't you know?" Baltar asked.

"Should I?" Laura addressed the Six.

"You are clearly not a sleeper model. So I thought that …." Baltar's voice trailed off.

"I don't know my programming," Laura said. The thought of being programmed and having no control filled her with dismay. "Maybe I have no mission?" she added hopefully.

Six looked skeptical. "It would be unlike the Ones, not to try to get the most out of a single copy."

"How can I find out for sure?" Laura asked.

"Do you feel any strange urges?" Baltar said.

Six sniggered. Baltar cast her an exasperated look.

"Other than to kill myself?" Laura said. "Hardly."

"Hardly?"

She looked away. She was not about to confess to this half-witted genius that she wanted to hold Bill in her arms until that desperate and vulnerable look had left his face.

"I am a danger to the Fleet." Maybe the President of the Colonies could grant her death, even when Bill refused it.

Baltar frowned, assessing her in puzzlement, when suddenly he drew back a bit. "You want to reclaim the presidency!"

Of course he would think about himself first. "I am not that Laura Roslin," she said jadedly.

"Ah," he relaxed against the stealth Six. Dangers to the Fleet apparently were secondary to him losing his presidency.

Maybe his self-interest was the opening she needed. "Though people keep regarding me as her," she pushed.

"Well you do look like her," he agreed, eying her licentiously. "Somewhat."

"I don't want to be a risk for your presidency."

She had his attention now. "What do you propose?" he asked.

"Let me destroy this copy."

"You mean, kill yourself, is that what you ask of me, to kill yourself?" There crept a hint of alarm in his voice.

The Six forced Baltar's head towards her so that she could look him in the eye.

"What would your constituents think," she said, "when they find out you murdered their former president?"

"I will not do the murdering," he exclaimed. "Or will I?" He looked helplessly from one woman to the other. "I most definitely don't want that."

"No," Laura said.

"Yes," Six said. "That is what talk wireless will make of it. The President is not even able to protect prisoners; how can he protect the Fleet?"

"No," Bill said.

Laura hadn't seen him enter, but there he was, moving towards the seated president.

"Indeed," Baltar whispered, shrinking under Bill's hard gaze. "Of course not." He stood and staggered away from the military leader. "I order you to keep this prisoner safe in her cell, Commander. Do not let her out of here. She is a danger to the Fleet."

"You order?" Bill asked slowly.

"I mean, it would be better for everyone if this prisoner is kept in isolation," Baltar floundered. "Don't you agree, Commander?"

"I do," said Bill. "Visiting hours are over, Mister President."

Bill cast a disparaging look at Laura, pressed his lips together to express his opinion about her latest antics and left, not quite pushing the President before him.

The Six trailed them at a leisurely pace and turned at the door to wave at Laura.

"See you."

Laura wondered what the agenda of the stealth Six was. Bill most obviously could not see her.


	11. Chapter 11

[Resurrection Hub, Laura's Quarters]

The Resurrection Hub lacked doors in a way that unnerved Laura, but seemed to be quite natural for the other models. She had projected a solid wooden door to her apartment, the very first night, but Cylons, centurions and humanoids alike, passed through that barrier as if it didn't exist. Which, of course, it didn't. She'd asked Buster to stand guard when she slept, and felt a little more sheltered because of that.

Part of her discomfort stemmed from Leoben's habit to drop in on her, sometimes bringing dinner and staying to eat with her, interested in her beliefs and opinions in a myriad of ways.

As the origin of the skin jobs and the whereabouts of the missing five models was not discussed openly and certainly not in the Board, even after the questions she had raised with the Twos, Threes and Sixes, philosophic speculation was all Laura had to work with, so she accepted Leoben's unannounced interludes. Metaphysics were his model's forte.

"God guides us towards our destiny," Leoben said.

A machine who believed in the Gods would be anomalous in its own right, one that believed in a single god had a serious flaw in his programming. The Lords of Kobol had at least shown themselves before the tribes left to colonize the twelve planets. She had seen too much on that planet to discard the scriptures, even though the experience never made her a true believer the way Elosha had become.

Why embed a belief system in machines? Was their god their inventor, the mad genius who had created them? Was the Cylon religion nothing but a failsafe mechanism so they would recognize him if he showed up? Or was their god the mother the hybrid had spoken of? Laura would gladly give her right arm to have a few words with the Cylon creator. If she could only find him.

"Tell me about your god," she said.

"We are all God, all of us. God is the love that binds all living things together." He nodded as if he shared a profound truth, but it was hardly a helpful response.

"God created the Cylons?" she probed.

"He created the human first, but they fell into sin. That's when he decided to create the Cylons."

The idea that humans and Cylons were created by the same entity was unsettling. "Is he still alive?"

Leoben frowned at her as if he was watching the views whirling in her mind. Maybe 'alive' was an abomination, something only mortal humans suffered from. "God is undying and everlasting," he finally said.

She hummed a vague consent, while she wondered whether that meant that their god was a Cylon too, given his immortality. It was unlikely. There would have been a clear hierarchy in the Board if one of the seven models was the creator. He would have been the supreme leader.

"How do you contact him?" Someone who created humanoid robots may have had the good sense to set up a maintenance department for glitches, updates, patches and regular maintenance checks.

"God gave us our souls so we could see him."

They saw him? She surely couldn't. Maybe it was a sign that she wasn't a true Cylon, but just an inferior model. Which she probably was, given that her creator was the far from godlike Cavil. And him, she could see far too clearly.

"What does he want from you?" she pressed. "Did he command the Cylons to destroy the humans?" She held her breath. A religious war was much harder to bring to an end than any other kind.

"God commands that we procreate," Leoben said.

She tittered, surprised by the sudden change of track.

He laughed with her, but his eyes remained serious. He shifted closer, gazing into her eyes again, as if looking for something. Warmth emanated from his body.

Procreation seemed an odd undertaking for robots. Combining immortality with procreation was a ticket to overpopulation if ever there was one, and mixing DNA in an appallingly arbitrary approach during an act of copulation seemed an abysmal strategy for the development of an artificial race.

"I don't see many children," she said.

"We try," Leoben answered grim-faced. "We've tried combinations of all the models. Ones with Threes, Twos with Sixes, Fours with Eights, and so on, even the Hybrids were involved. To no avail."

She saw the clinical experiments in her mind's eye. Rows and rows of Cylon models copulating without pause in an utterly unromantic setting while the Simons checked their progress. She smirked. It was a godsend that it hadn't been successful.

Leoben had shifted quite close to her on the couch and raised his right hand slowly, as if trying not to scare her. He pushed a strand of hair from her face.

She shivered and froze, straining not to pull back. Her human body had been beyond her childbearing years, but this new one was just a few months old.

"We're very glad there's finally a new female model," he whispered, bending towards her.

.

.

[Observation Room, _Galactica_ 's Brig]

She did it again, stationary jogging in her cell. Even though Bill had taken away the jumping cord Billy had brought her after she'd tried to hang herself with it, Laura still exercised every day. Stationary running, hand stands, flip flops, push-ups, yoga postures.

Every time she didn't wince in pain when he anticipated she would, every time she didn't wheeze from exhaustion, new relief stacked upon a mounting heap inside of him that she might actually, _actually_ be well. Her neck was healing nicely too.

He spent his afternoons just watching her exercise via the vid system in the Observation Room, though at times the youthful spring in her tread, the sways of her auburn locks, the bouncing of her breasts underneath her shift distracted him into painful understanding of the impossibility of his hopes.

.

.

[ _Galactica_ 's Brig]

He did it again, entering her cell, this gray-haired ghost of a Bill, this skinny version of the bulky man she'd once known. Even though she did nothing to encourage him, he kept coming, sometimes just standing in the door opening, sometimes bringing a chair and seating himself a polite distance away from her, saying little, but hoping to elicit a reaction from her, always.

She looked up from her book and found him leaning against the door frame, his vulnerable face bleaker, pastier than yesterday, the telltale sign of an accumulation of rough nights and excessive drinking. Though he'd shaved off the ridiculous mustache he'd had when she first opened her eyes, he wasn't coping well. She had to warn him about the stealth Six.

How to prove that she even existed? No one saw her. Bill might believe her, on her word, because he trusted the original one, but he couldn't confront Baltar on her word alone. And if he did, and he might in his desperation, it would lead to impossible situations, easily construed as a Cylon conspiracy to impeach the President of the Colonies, and to pave the way for a reelection of Roslin. A Roslin. Any Roslin.

She couldn't bring up the stealth Six without creating a joined project, without raising his hopes. Even for an unfinished prototype, her impact was staggering. He wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer as it was. She needed to end this.

But he was still Bill, and she knew he wouldn't kill her, he couldn't kill her, not after what he'd gone through with the original one. She knew that he would never give up hope, and that she had to take hope away from him, to keep him safe.

She pulled up her internal defenses and looked him in the eye. "I'm not her, Commander. She is dead."

"You're not her," he acknowledged with a nod of his head.

She saw his eyes light up, his spirits lift, now that she had addressed him of her own accord. A wrong move, that.

She took a deep breath. "You know there's only one thing I want, Commander," she said, finality in her voice, "and that is death."

The spark in him died. "Yes," he said.

He turned and left.


	12. Chapter 12

[Resurrection Hub, Roslin Resurrection Section]

After Leoben had shared his hope to father children with her model, Laura tried to avoid the Twos as much as she could, not an easy task in an environment without doors, not an easy task in a Hub with a great many Leoben copies.

She hadn't flat out refused his reproduction scheme. She needed some leverage after all, she needed allies to fight Cavil, but the option revolted her almost as much as Cavil's abuses had done.

Both Cylons seemed to have no inhibitions about intercourse, certainly no than chief Tyrol had about refueling a raptor. Sex was a technicality, although Leoben had murmured a few odd phrases about the importance of love, the significance of which had escaped Laura altogether. At least Leoben had asked.

And if, _if_ she would allow it for the sake of creating an alliance, there apparently was a fair chance that she would conceive Cylon offspring, that she would be the mother of a race of machines, a means by which Cylons would survive even after the Resurrection Hub was destroyed. Not a great set of incentives either. But what options did she have?

Her other possible coalition partner, Three, did share Laura's interest in the five missing models, but the prevention of the mass production of a line of Roslins, one of Laura's main goals, was far from Three's mind.

Laura needed allies she could trust.

"How is resurrection done?" she asked Three, leaning on the empty resurrection tub were she had started her 36th incarnation, her mood darkened by the difficulty, the virtual impossibility, to prevent Cavil's program of creating Roslins; her mind wrestling with the opportunities she knew the situation had to have, her being at the central resurrection facility of humanity's deadliest enemy, her being so near the core of the Cylon longevity.

The Three shrugged as if the answer to Laura's question about resurrection was self-evident, which it probably was, when it was part of your programming.

Laura wondered if she should and could get a software update herself, one that included this kind of inbred Cylon knowledge, if there was a special reason Cavil had not included it in her programming and if, maybe, it exclusion was an indication of the usefulness of the information for Laura's own plans.

"Can I see it?"

"Not a whole lot of dying going on right now," the Three said, "but sure, if one is imminent, come and have a look."

"Can we test it with a Roslin?" Laura asked. "Now?"

Resurrecting a few Lauras with her original mind intact would kill two birds with one stone, even though the other Lauras may not see it that way, and would not respond too well to being brought back to live as a Cylon. It could not be helped. She needed people she could trust implicitly, her own army.

The Three looked at her, baffled, but with a veiled glee shining through her surprise.

"Cavil will not like it," she said.

"Are these my copies or his?"

D'Anna nodded. "Let's do it!"

.

* * *

.

[Observation Room, _Galactica_ ]

When Saul entered the observation room he found Bill slumped in the chair, snoring, his hands folded in his lap, his head in an uncomfortable crooked bend that he would regret later.

Bill had dismissed the guards once again and taken over the monitoring, having spent the better part of his afternoons in the observation room, exemplifying the same sort of vigil he'd displayed when the real Roslin had been dying.

It was obvious Bill couldn't take this kind of strain. He had disregarded many of his duties since the Cylon arrived, just as he'd disregarded Saul's cautionary comments and sarcastic heckling.

"It's a thing, Bill. It's a time bomb."

Saul had repeated it so often that Bill had forbidden him to even come near the brig, afraid he would take matters in his own hands. But now the old man was out cold -.

Saul turned abruptly, picked up the side arm from the outside locker, stopped in front of the cell and quietly opened the door.

It looked up from the book it was reading, and regarded him impassively as if he was of no consequence and not even really there.

"It's time for you to end this," he said and showed it the side arm he'd brought with him.

It straightened and closed the book, watching him carefully and with hope, its eyes regaining some of Roslin's old glimmer. He had its full attention now.


	13. Chapter 13

[Resurrection Hub, Roslin Resurrection Section]

Laura followed the Three past the resurrection tub to the next area, and stopped abruptly. A triangular hall stretched before her, filled with female bodies, nude, stacked neatly in rows on the floor and against the walls up to the ceiling, their long auburn hair proclaiming them to be Roslins, like herself. Buster strode past her, stopped a little further, looked at her over his shoulder and walked back to stand behind her.

Fifty-four, fifty-five, she counted her replacements on impulse. Fifty-six fully operational hibernating bodies without any programming, without any memories, void of what made her herself and yet undeniably herself. She walked to the nearest one and stared at the body with barely hidden interest. Every freckle, the mark on her cheek, the small scar on her thigh, even the small differences between the coronas of her breasts, all telltale points were there. She felt exposed, her body displayed like this, but knew every one of these bodies could house an ally, soon.

The Three had proceeded to a counter with a liquid interface and beckoned Laura

"We have to find the memories first," she said, putting her hands in the solution, her eyes glazing over as she contacted the Cylon data stream.

Tentatively, Laura raised her own hand to the table. Would she be able to do that, too?

Experimentally, she dipped the tip of her index finger in the fluid and startled at a prickly sensation that danced up her finger and warmed the palm of her hand. Her eyes watching the distracted Three, Laura put a whole hand in, copying the posture the Three, flattening it against the bottom.

The tingling phenomenon traveled up her arm, her neck, and suddenly she knew the Cylon mainframe, she was the Cylon mainframe, without boundaries, and any which way she thought responses came, data, solutions, perspectives. The schematics of the ship, the last known location of the Fleet, the maintenance schedule of every raider. Through the central intelligence she sensed the Three near her, the Twos all over the Hub, Buster only three feet behind her, and the Hybrid three decks down a little to her left.

The buzz ended unexpectedly.

The Three held Laura's wrist firmly up, her hand above the water. "Don't," D'Anna said tersely. "You disrupt the flow. Do your own experiments another time."

Laura felt hollow and disconnected without the engulfing streams, but she nodded. First things first.

"There are forty-two different sets of Roslin memories in the data stream," Three said. "Which one should I pick? Strand 36, the basis of your current existence?"

"My original memories, are they there too?" Laura dared not to hope, but meeting her original self, having her original self, the real Laura Roslin, as an ally would be the best she could think of and finally a true resurrection of herself.

D'Anna shrugged. "Sure."

"Then, please."

* * *

[ _Galactica_ 's brig]

The Cylon eyed the side arm Saul offered her.

"Why do you do this?" it asked.

The gall it had.

* * *

[ _Galactica's_ Brig, Observation Room]

Bill jerked awake, skipping all intermediary steps straight to full alertness at the sound of her voice.

* * *

[ _Galactica_ 's brig]

"It's either you or him," he said. "You're killing him as surely as a bullet would. You said you don't want that."

"I don't."

"Then finish this." Saul unlocked the safety pin and, with an offhand gesture, tossed the side arm on the cot. It bounced twice and then lay still, pointing at the Cylon.

It hadn't moved. "Thank you," it said.

He exhaled. Satisfied that it would be done, he turned to leave, preferring not to be near the corpse of the Cylon that Bill was smitten with, the Cylon Bill had so desperately tried to keep alive.

At the cell door, Saul collided with a menacing Bill, who filled the doorway, a livid glare on his face.

Saul, aware he'd violated the core of the Old Man's trust, stumbled backward, but Bill's fist already crashed in on his chin, the blow fracturing the bone, propelling Saul off the floor, back into the cell, until his head, with a resounding crash, hit the hard metal deck, leaving him dazzled.

He tried to scramble away - the fury of his friend would not be satisfied with a single blow, but he saw Bill dashing for the gun on the Cylon's cot.

It was no longer there.

The Cylon held it to its temple, its hands unwavering, its lips curled back in a sneer, prepared and intent on pressing the trigger right now.

Bill was only a few feet from the cot, his arms outstretched, ready to lurch, to wrestle the Cylon for the gun.

"Back off," it snarled at him, its unforgiving tone relaying it would not hesitate to pull the trigger, right in front of his eyes.

Bill hurled his mass backward to arrest his momentum and he hit the deck with a deep thud.

He slowly scrambled to a sitting position, his demeanor deflated and defeated, his hands in a placating pose, his eyes fixed on the Cylon. "Please," he said.

Saul closed his eyes. His solution had brought about the worst possible scenario. The thing would kill itself in front of the old man, killing Bill just as surely as if it would shoot him in the head.

"You better kill him first," he cautioned the Cylon, wincing through the pain from his jaw.

In the silence that followed, Saul felt blood trickle over his scalp, through his hair to create a growing cold puddle under his head. The metal indentations of the deck formed circles against his legs and his back, and he relaxed against them, surrendering to their solidity.

Maybe it would be just as well if he died here today, too. Without Bill, what was the point? All hell would break lose in the fleet.

He drifted off into the darkness.


	14. Chapter 14

[Resurrection Hub, Cavil section]

The two black clad men almost slithered off of their couch from laughing. Simon stood and watched them, one eyebrow raised.

"You don't get it, do you?" a Cavil said wiping the tears from his cheeks.

"What is so funny about the Roslins resurrecting themselves?" Simon said. "They could form an army of their own."

"No one better than a converted Roslin to keep Roslins alive."

"You planned this?"

That sobered the old men up.

"Not exactly. _He_ planned to kill her," the right Cavil said, pointing at the left one. _I_ planned some more brain surgery. But we'll leave it be for now. See how _she_ solves the Roslin Suicide Problem."

.

* * *

.

[ _Galactica's_ Brig]

"Saul is right," Bill said, looking up at the woman on the bed. "Killing me first would be the gentler act."

She frowned at him.

"You expect me to sit here and watch how you blow - " He swallowed, the image too vivid, burning his mind. "You expect me to lead your frakking Fleet after that?"

He thought he saw realization dawn in her eyes, but she looked away, the gun pressed against her temple moving sideways with her head.

Bill waited, trying to read her familiar face from his odd angle on the deck, hoping for a trace of an opening through the aura of impassiveness she had drew around herself once more. At least she was still alive.

For a time, she just sat there, like Laura often had when she contemplated the hard facts, the impossible choices she'd had to make as leader of the Fleet; a very private woman, schooled by the unforgiving reality of post-exodus life into making the harsh decisions, occasionally sacrificing the few for the survival of the many.

"You can go away," she suggested.

"No," he told her.

Would she realize how serious he was about not being able to stand losing her again; would she understand that his was not an empty threat, but a grim prediction by a military strategist, a man who had intimate knowledge of how empty his life was without her.

He saw a chagrined glower surfaced on her face, and a fierce determination settle in her jaws. He tensed and considered a dash at the side arm. What could he lose? He drew his legs under him, to be more mobile.

She raised her chin slowly, her eyes turning towards the ceiling and Bill breathed again, knowing the gesture for what it was: tears were pooling in her eyes. There was a fissure in her defenses.

"Tigh is right," she whispered.

"You'll hand the Cylons the victory when you kill yourself." Bill drove the point home; she still held the side arm to her temple.

"Alive, I'm a threat too." She looked down at him, this image of the woman he'd loved more than live itself, composed as the president she once was, but for the flow of tears over her cheeks. "No one knows my programming."

"Your programming is uncertain," he acknowledged with a nod. He needed a common ground to be able to reach her.

She nodded back.

"Saul taking over when I die is a certainty," he said with all the impartial flatness he could muster. "Unless it's Zarek." He let it hang there for a few seconds. "What Cylon program could do more damage than that?" he then asked.

She looked at Saul's stretched out body. Her lips twitched in doubt.

"If you die," Bill played his final card, the one notion that had troubled him most, ever since she'd first tried to kill herself in his brig, "if you end your life, you will find yourself resurrected by the Cylons, reprogrammed and send back to the Fleet." He breathed. "Again. And again. And again."

She bit her lower lip.

"They own you now, Laura. Body _and_ soul. For all eternity."

Her eyes locked onto his. The side arm wavered against her temple.

"But," he added, "they can only get to you when you die - _if_ you die - and I intend to not let that happen again for a very long time."

Her shoulders dropped. "So I'm trapped?"

"Yes."

"Damned if I do, and damned if I don't?"

"Being a Cylon test object, a Cylon operative, won't be quite the same as living here in the Fleet, with us," he said, knowing he had driven her in a corner, and aware that needn't stop her, not Laura Roslin.

She studied him, silently.

He waited, watching her cautiously.

After a moment she nodded.

With a soft sigh and a minute shift in her eyes, the aura of reservation she had so meticulously pulled up, dissolved and she looked at him properly now, as Laura had long months ago, frail, unguarded, human.

He dared not to hope, but his hopes rose nevertheless now she showed herself to him again.

She frowned at the gun and lowered it, allowing him to see the uncertainty on her face, acknowledging with her demeanor that they had known each other for a long time, that they were in this together.

Elated by the sudden evaporation of the threat and nourished by their unexpected reconnection, he let a crooked smile show on his face.

She tried to mirror the gesture, faltered, and blinked at him watery, disquiet in her eyes.

"We might as well enjoy it," he suggested, a careful measure of lightness in his voice.

Her left brow disappeared behind her hair line, her lips pursed in disapproval, then quirked upward into a wry thin smile. "Is that your military opinion, Commander?" she asked, almost the President again.

"War College 101," he shrugged modestly. "If all else fails, enjoy yourself."

"Education is my undoing," she echoed her old self, acknowledging she remembered having been there with him in the port side reserve lockers, long months ago, accepting their shared past, and effectively disarming Bill who just sat there, grinning up at her, awash with relief.

The side arm had come to rest in her lap. He longed to take it from her, but he knew he couldn't live with the constant fear that she would kill herself as soon as he left the room. She'd have to _want_ to stay.

"Now what do we do?" she asked.

"It's up to you." He worked himself up from the floor. He wanted her in his life, in his quarters, but it had to be her decision.

"It is?" She craned her neck to look up at him.

"It is."

He walked over to Saul, knelt down, and checked his condition. Satisfied by the steady beat of his pulse, he moved towards the communication unit and ordered a medical team down to the brig.

When he put down the horn, he felt how exhausted he was, how, now that the tension had left, the sleepless nights were catching up with him, fast.

He walked towards the cot and sat down heavily near the middle of it, not far from her, but out of her personal space and out of her sight.

"So what do you want?" he asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

She was silent.

Bill rubbed his forehead, trying to keep his focus. He eyed the cot. If she'd been his Laura, he would have stretched out on it and rested a little, while they talked.

She turned her head to regard him, a new sadness in her eyes. "I was so determined to destroy this copy that I never contemplated alternatives."

Her despondency grated at him. He laid a hand between her shoulder blades in silent support, as he would have done with his own Laura.

She sighed against his palm; her muscles relaxing under his touch.

Ishay rushed into the cell, followed by two medics carrying a stretcher. She kneeled next to Saul and checked his vital signs and skull with expert ease.

"A chin fracture and some blood loss," she reported to Bill, while the medics hoisted Saul onto the stretcher, "nothing major."

Bill nodded at her. "Continue. I'll follow later."

When they had the brig to themselves again, Laura turned towards him. He was unsure if she was aware of the effect she was having, aware of the way the old look in her eyes warmed him, the way her closeness sustained him.

"I'm too tired," she said, "to think of new options right now." She leaned in and rested against him without reservations, as she'd done so often, before.

He breathed in and cautiously wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "Rest," he said. "We have time now."

As her body settled against his and her warmth seeped into his side, he let go of the last of the tension. He didn't want much more out of life. He could stay like this for a long, long time.

"I'm not her," she murmured against his chest and her warm body grew rigid.

"I know," he said, loosening his arm around her in case she wanted to break away.

"I have her memories, though," she said, her finger leisurely followed his invisible scar through his uniform. "I remember being teacher and Secretary and President. I remember being ill, the pain of it, I remember being with you. It's hard to feel like anybody else but her – me."

He smiled in her hair. "So, you remember us?"

"We were so desperate to make every moment matter. I was counting down, always. You were the best thing that happened to me in a long while."

She pulled up her legs, and moved her body downward so she could stretch out on the cot, softly drawing him with her.

"Laura?" he asked, carefully keeping his balance.

"Tired," she murmured, tugging him down with her.

Half-way through her descent, she encountered the discarded fire arm and, with an uncomplicated gesture, handed it to Bill, her eyes already closed.

He accepted it, changed the safety settings and let the gun slip to the deck as he went down next to her,

"It has been lonely," she breathed in his neck, snuggling closer "This suicide mission."

He nodded, unable to speak.

"I'm sorry you had to go through it all," she whispered.

He hummed his acceptance.

"I'd hoped it would hurt you less if we remained strangers," she said.

"It didn't help," he said gruffly.

She wrapped her arm around his torso, shifted herself against his side until she was comfortable.

"Damned if we do, damned if –" she mumbled and, with a deep sigh melted into him and drifted off to sleep.

She was restored to succulent beauty, her face unguarded and vulnerable and, even as this too young incarnation, very much her own woman, like the original. That she chose to lean into him felt like a special privilege, even now.

She smelled like a soft and wilting flower and the way her hand nonchalantly rested against his chest made him whole again.

For a while he just laid there, his eyes closed, his body aware of where she pressed against him, soothing him into believing this was real, this was truly Laura and they had a future together.

Eventually, sleep took over.


	15. Chapter 15

[Resurrection Hub]

The newly resurrected one lay in the tub and looked up at Laura, her eyes hooded, her body taut with tension, her mouth curved downward in an unspoken rejection and revulsion of the situation. A shudder ran through her naked form.

"Hush," Laura said. She bent over and stroked the other one's arm. "I am you, we are on the same side. It's all right."

But the new one looked about her with a barely concealed dismay in her eyes. Her gaze lingered on Buster with fear and she jolted when D'Anna stepped into view.

D'Anna laughed.

"Why do you do this to me?" the new one asked Laura.

There was nothing to do but be honest with this first and best copy of herself.

"I need allies, to stop Cavil from mass producing us and sending us back to unhinge the Fleet." She hoped it was not too much information in too short a burst, but she trusted the unaltered intellect even more than she trusted herself.

The new one pursed her lips. "So you started mass producing us yourself?"

Laura winced, and conceded the point with a small gesture of her head. "Seven months have passed. Cavil is making progress. One of us is already back in the Fleet and I am the thirty-sixth modified sample of us. We must stop this. We have lost the ability to kill ourselves. I need you."

The original one studied her silently, her face in the pensive frown Laura recognized as thoroughly conflicted.

"You seem to be handling this," the woman in the tub finally said.

"I am, but –"

"I don't want to be here. I don't want to live as a Cylon. My life had come to a closure. I was ready to die. I _am_ ready to die."

Laura eyed her disheartened. "Don't. I need you."

"Please do not do this to me."

D'Anna stepped forward. "It's of no use," she said. "We've seen the determination of these earlier strands before. Even if we keep her alive for a few days, she will find a way to kill herself soon enough."

"But…"

"Let's not waste any time on this." D'Anna ordered Buster closer with a small hand gesture. "Kill her, Centurion."

Buster stepped forward.

Laura saw panic in eyes of the woman in the tub. Wanting to die was not the same as welcoming being forcefully ripped open by bullets. Having no control was terrifying.

"Now," D'Anna ordered.

"Buster, no!" Laura said sharply. "Stand down!"

Buster remained in his readiness stance, but he did not brandish his weapons.

"Now, Centurion." D'Anna demanded dispassionately.

Buster with a slow motion moved his head from left to right and back to the middle again.

"Very well, then." D'Anna stepped towards the tub and reached for the new one's neck.

"D'Anna, stop!" Laura cried. "I'll help her. Stop! We can do this in a benign way."

She jumped towards the Three, ready to wrestle her for the new one's life, but D'Anna stepped back, rolled her eyes at the two women, and sighed. "Have it your way. "

"I will."

The Three turned and left.

"Come," Laura said to the new one, "I'll show you our quarters."

* * *

[ _Galactica_ Brig]

She had no words for his scent, she just knew that it drew her nearer, wanting to press her nose in his neck and then maybe kiss him there. He was home incarnate. She'd made it. She had made it home.

His soft chuckle told her that he'd awakened when she tilted her head to take him in, and that her staring hadn't gone unnoticed. She sought out his eyes and found him grinning.

"Do indulge yourself," he rumbled, raising his chin, exposing more of his neck.

She smiled, leaned in, both her hands flat against his warm chest, his heart beat thudding under her palm, and, letting her nose lead her way, scaled the marked face of his cheeks, nuzzled against his closed eyelids and then slid down via his ear to the hollow of his neck. Just there, yes.

He hummed, sighed deeply, pulled her nearer, and closed his eyes.

His slow breathing betrayed that he'd drifted off again. She relaxed against him, her nose in the hollow of his neck.

She'd never expected, not even faintly hoped for this outcome. It had been unfathomable. It still was, until it wasn't anymore. She stretched out alongside him and followed him into sleep.


	16. Chapter 16

Warning: non A/R smut of the somewhat explicit sort, voyeurism

* * *

[Leoben's Quarters, Resurrection Hub]

His blond head moved between her thighs, his tongue swirling over her labia, through them, inside of her, in a vigorous and fluctuating pattern that drove her to throw her head back against the couch, to buck her hips against his stubbly chin, trying to stifle the cries that welled up in her, trying not to squash his head between her legs as she fought the immanent orgasm that he had been building up in her like an artist, a connoisseur, a man who had frakked so many women with such tender compassion that he profoundly knew how to drive them incoherent, how to unravel them, how to make them beg for more, for deeper, for don't stop; beg for their release.

Opening her legs for the Two, accepting the closeness of his body, his breath stirring her hair, his flesh grinding against hers, his entering of her, his semen exploding inside, his brothers watching as they frakked, had not been an easy decision, but three resurrected Roslins had already self-destructed in quick succession, none of them living longer than a day, all of them resenting her for bringing them back to life, none of them understanding that this was the only way to stop Cavil, all of them claiming to protect Bill by dying as soon as possible, none of them able to see past their horror of being resurrected as a Cylon.

She has to remove the self-destructive streak from the Roslin program or she would never be able to become her own ally, she had to alter the programming of the Roslins, so that at least a few would survive their resurrection.

Leoben had been willing to teach her how.

For a price.

She told herself he was a robot, a tool, a sex toy like the ones she'd had for almost her entire adult life, that he was merely an advanced one, and, as it turned out, better at the job than any of the most sophisticated ones she'd ever found in both the classiest and the kinkiest shops in downtown Caprica City.

At the far end of the room, Buster watched them dispassionately. The rothers Leoben shared his unit with studied them with interest, their eyes alight, a smile on their lips. Laura chose to ignore them.

Leoben withdrew his tongue just before the wave of her orgasm could crash down on her, drawing her legs up, sliding her feet over his shoulder, opening her for him even further, the cool air breezing over her wetness before Leoben drove himself inside her, warm and firm, his hard body bucking, his eyes never leaving hers, hypnotizing intense, as if he could see where to hit her, how to move inside her by the responses of her irises, as if he wanted nothing else but giving her the most memorable bliss she had ever experienced.

He played her like a priceless instrument, passionate and ardent, allowing her her first orgasmic convulsions before he changed his pace. Laura's moans grew to cries, her hands grasping for purchase at the couch, hanging on for dear life. Leoben drove her over the edge, following not a second behind her, scattering his seed in her, wasted as much a she was, sweating, beaming at her, his religious duty fulfilled.

The three brothers stepped closer to the couch and smiled down at them, taking in Laura with a deep sense of connection in their eyes, nodding at her as if they had just copulated with her themselves, congratulating the naked Two on top of her, looking at her as if wondering whether they would get their own turn too.

.

* * *

.

Please let me know what you think. This scene came out of the blue and surprised me. Hope it didn't disturb.  
Back to A/R in the next section, coming soon.


	17. Chapter 17

Warning: misunderstood played non-con, unplanned voyeurism

* * *

[ _Galactica_ Brig, a few hours later]

There was pleasant pressure shifting against him over the full length of his body. A small hand caressed his chest and then this cheek. Bill opened his eyes and found her on top of him, her face inches from his.

"Hi," he smiled, not having felt this unwound in a long while.

She smiled back at him and transferred her weight unreservedly against him, distracting him. He swallowed, grinning at her in encouragement, his hand following the slender curve of her waistline and her hip until it found her butt. He worked it languidly and she wriggled against him, moving in closer.

"Bill?" she mumbled, her lips travelling over the flesh in his neck, her auburn hair hanging down, a curtain that encircled both their faces.

He hummed a low tone in response, recognizing the signs, wanting to extract the other sounds he had stored in his memory for too long, the echoes of their shared past, hoping this was the prelude he thought it was. His hand slipped inside the lose pants of her prison outfit, finding the cool skin of her behind, cupping it, pressing her against him, her pelvis rippling over his growing erection in an unsustainable way.

"Laura," he grated. It had been so long, too long.

"Bill?" she sounded a bit more insistent now, and pushed herself up on her elbows to observe him with her familiar aged eyes. Her lower eyelids moved up almost imperceptibly, the way they did when she tried to hide her mirth.

"Laura?"

Her lips were pleasantly close so he brought his head up to capture them. They were as supple, experienced and demanding as he remembered. Her pupils dilated, almost hiding her irises, she moved in on him with a suppressed moan, opening her mouth to his lips, her tongue finding his, her long hair tickling his neck, his ears, his face; her hips rolling against him with the rhythm of their kissing.

Yes, definitely a prelude.

She broke away from the kiss and looked at him, her eyes hooded. Her tongue drew a small circle over her lips as if inspecting them for wear; watching him watching her. Love ballooned in his chest, filled his lungs, his head, the entire length of his body, with the delight her presence.

"You want to do this here?" she asked.

His body told him that it wanted to do it, never mind the location, and that walking the corridors in his current condition would be an embarrassment, if nothing else. His body encouraged him to put his hands under her shirt, caress her back, undress her and lose himself in her in all the ways he remembered.

Laura's eyes grew larger.

"You would if you could, wouldn't you?" she asked.

"I want you."

.

* * *

[ _Galactica_ 's Brig, Observation Room]

In the Observation Room private Anton Astonov looked at his buddy Felicia Boeng with mild disbelief and some gleeful anticipation. "He is going to do it," he said to her. They had arrived a few minutes ago, starting the evening shift.

"Can he?" Felicia asked, disgusted. "Sexual abuse of prisoners is torture under the Articles of Colonization."

"She doesn't seem to resent it all that much," Anton pointed out as the former president slid her hand between their two bodies and was now, if the response of the Commander was any indication, tugging at his cock, expertly.

"Maybe she just wants to get it over with asap, now that she has no other options. It's what the handbook recommends. Don't resist, comply and wait for the rescue."

"Are you nuts?" The way the woman undulated her hips against the Old Man spoke of wanton desire, if he was any judge of women.

"It's what I would do if an old man –"

"They were an item, way back before she was killed."

"She is a prisoner now, or she would not be in a cell. We have to stop him, it's our duty."

"You want to walk in there and interrupt the Commander while - ?" he made a crude hand sign. "Not me, thank you very much. We will be scrubbing the tyllium tanks until we find Earth."

She sat down again.

The prisoner had just removed her bra, and the Commander buried his face in her breasts.

Felicia averted her eyes.

"The Colonel has some influence. They go back a long way, him and Adama, so I heard," she said, and grabbed the phone.


	18. Chapter 18

Warning: character death, misunderstood played non-con, involuntary voyeurism.

* * *

.

[Resurrection Hub]

The new one sat on her couch in the white bathrobe Laura had given her. She sat like a president, straight, prim and distinctly ill at ease, her eyes drifting from Laura to Buster and back.

Laura wanted her to relax, these were her quarters too, after all - but this was not the first one she resurrected, and she knew by now she should not take it as a given that the new ones saw it that way too.

Leoben had helped her understand the programming interface and she had started to make her own modifications, trying to stop the Roslins from killing themselves. This was the fourth strand in that line and the twelfth copy of herself she faced.

"Something to drink?" Laura asked cordially, as if the new one was a long lost friend coming to visit her in Caprica City.

"How is Bill?" the woman asked quietly.

That was a new development. The earlier ones just insisted on being released to death.

"I don't know. One of our sisters is with the Fleet right now. He has failed to kill her," Laura said.

"Bill will not kill any of us, ever," the woman said. "Can we escape to the Fleet?"

Laura sat down, deflated. Escape to the Fleet would play right into Cavil's plans. His objective was to send as many Roslins as he could back to humanity.

It would be easy to reach _Galactica_ \- the Cylons would cooperate more than willingly, provide raptors, provide coordinates.

Laura's shoulders slumped. She'd managed to create part of the programming Cavil and Simon were aiming at. She would have to destroy this copy and its programming before Cavil got his hands on it.

"Buster."

The centurion came to attention, signaling its readiness.

"Kill her."

Her centurion brandished its firearms with a resounding click.

The new one jumped of the couch. "What! Why are you doing this?". Her eyes grew wide with terror. "Don't!"

It was useless to clarify the implications of the situation to a copy that couldn't survive anyhow. Laura would merely explain her reasons to get the new one's permission to kill her. And she did not need that.

"Do it," Laura said.

The new one shrank for a second, then righted her shoulders, and stood straight, looking Laura in the eyes, every fiber of her being a president.

Buster fired.

The body shook when the bullets penetrated it. She was propelled backward by the force and fell with a resounding thud. Red spots spread on the white bathrobe and a pool of blood seeped out from under the body. Her right hand twitched upward, powerlessly reaching for the wounds in her abdomen, then fell still by her side.

"Clean it up," Laura said in a friendly tone.

* * *

.

[ _Galactica's_ Brig]

The moment she bared her breasts, he was irretrievably lost, even though their smooth skin, their firmness, the telltale signs that she was at least twenty years younger flustered him, a dissonant in the dream he'd let himself drift into, the desire that this was Laura, his Laura and the middle aged body he knew so well he could draw it in his sleep.

When she brought the breasts down to his lips, he pulled her close with a rough gesture and buried his face deep in the soft masses, fighting the urge to flip them both, then giving into the impulse, extracting a giggly squeak from her - her warm body welcoming him, pressing against him in all the right places.

"You really don't want to go?" she asked.

He felt his neck pricking, knowing a darker shade of skin expanded, right in front of her eyes. He squirmed.

"Bill?"

 _Acted out with a real soldier in a real brig some of Richard's scenarios would become, ah, overpowering. Too late for us now._

"You wrote, you wanted, you would enjoy –" He faltered. She'd given him her diaries herself, but quoting her from them seemed a breach of her privacy nevertheless. He breathed the passage in her ear.

She chortled, her eyes lighting up. "Ah, you liked that idea, did you?"

He could only nod. He could frak her in any way she wanted, he would frak her in any way, if she wanted him. He didn't need anything to enhance his arousal, not with her in his arms, but pleasing her was foremost in his thoughts now she so unexpectedly had decided to reconnect with him.

He'd never thought her to be into games of dominance and submission, their daily life as leaders of the Fleet already too full of power plays as it was. Then again, maybe she'd simply wanted to bring the struggle to a more physical level, a level on which she could derail him with the bearing of her breasts, the twirl of her hips - a level on which arguments were obsolete.

"And since we are on location already … ," he suggested as impartially as possible.

"You've done this kind of thing - before?" she mumbled against his lips.

He shook his head. "Is there anything I need to know?"

She studied him, looking up at him, into his eyes as if trying to read his sexual experience from the inside of his skull.

"There'll be a safe word," she said, "since 'no' and 'stop' mean nothing at all, except maybe," her voice dropped to a throaty whisper, "'more', 'harder', 'deeper'." The words resonated inside him as, he was sure, she intended.

"A safe word," he nodded, "like what?"

He considered of the words and images that could turn him off, like garbage, or child birth - a procedure so much messier than he had ever envisioned.

"Strawberry jam?" she suggested.

"Strawberry jam?" He laughed, then nodded. "Strawberry jam, it is. Anything else?"

She shook her head. "We'll improvise." She nodded imperceptibly. "Ready?"

He hummed he was, though in all honesty playing the jailer seemed out of character and he wasn't sure he could harm his prisoner, this prisoner, even at her request, even if only play-acting it.

With no more warning than her nod, she started to squirm and writhe under him. "Let go of me." She used both hands to push him away from her, as if trying to escape.

Her strength amazed him, but the sudden racket of female pressure points wriggling against him tantalizingly multiplied his body's response to her. He grinned widely and struggled to get a firm grip of her hands, trying to tie them together with the bra she'd so kindly offered up earlier.

* * *

.

[G _alactica_ 's brig. Observation Room]

Saul, his head wrapped in bandages, had just left sickbay when the befuddled call of the guards reached him.

Now, as he watched his best friend and commanding officer, jacketless, his erection tenting his uniform pants, he wished he'd accepted the other round of sedatives from Cottle.

Bill had shackled the half-naked Cylon spread-eagled to the ironwork of the cell, its back to him and for all intent and purposes was ready to frak it. The Cylon was fighting Bill, struggling in its restraints. A bra?

"You must stop this," Private Boeng implored Saul.

Saul had never seen Bill misusing his strength and his authority, losing sense of his position, of his responsibilities, of his courtesy towards women in general and Roslin in particular, but Bill was taking out his undeniable lust on a defenseless, tied up prisoner, who was the mirror image of his dead lover.

Saul rubbed his eyes, wishing to escape this bad dream.

"Sir?" Boeng woke him to the situation in the Observation Room.

Saul ripped his eyes from the scene and turned to the private. "It's a machine. It has no emotions and no rights," he said curtly. It was true of course, but it did not explain Bill's behavior even one tiny fraction.

He waved her away and sat down, spellbound. Bill's actions would do little to increase the Cylon's will to live, but it certainly would release some of the Old Man's pent up tension. Maybe that was worth it.

"Colonel!" the private insisted.

"Outside, both of you. I'll take over here." Bill needed no witnesses of this gross transgression of his own orders.

Felicia stood, eager to leave, but Anton looked disappointed.

"Out," Saul said, "you're relieved. And keep your jaws closed, or I will have you transferred to ore processing. Do I make myself clear?"

The soldiers nodded, confused and hesitant.

"Do. I. Make. Myself. Clear?!" These damn rookies were made of butter instead of the steel the Fleet needed so badly.

"Yes, sir." The two saluted him somberly.

"Dismissed."

When the guards had left, he shut down the surveillance equipment, rewound, deleted the tapes, and turned back to the scene; his hand sliding down toward his crotch.


	19. Chapter 19

[Resurrection Hub]

Laura wandered through the corridors of the Hub, Buster trailing her at a distance. She projected Galactica, saddened she could never set foot in Bill's ship again, dismayed she'd had to kill the Roslin that expressed that heart-felt desire to reconnect with Bill that she felt too, distressed that all that rested her was trying to thwart the Cylon plans from inside the Hub.

The Hub was huge, a castle in space and after the death of the twelfth Roslin she'd began exploring it methodically. The one advantage of the Cylon lack of doors was that all areas were accessible. Nothing had prepared the Cylons for an enemy from within.

By now she'd seen halls of unclothed D'Annas, galleries of bare Leobens, and yet when she entered this new area, the first naked Cavil she saw was an abomination, an eyesore she wanted to look away from, not because she disliked men, not because nakedness disenchanted her or the nudity of old men repulsed her, but because this was Cavil and Cavil himself had made his nakedness revolting by forcing it onto her earlier strands, a memory she would gladly delete if she could.

As she walked past rows and rows of Cavils, three frames high, two rows deep, his bodies soon became nothing more than a backdrop, little more than a disagreeable wall paper pattern.

On the side opposite of the bodies, a large window flaunted the blackness of space, irradiated with small stars, brilliant clusters and translucent nebulae. Bill might have been able to identify his location by their constellations, but to her they were nothing but a beautiful sight.

Far below her, at the lower levels of the Hub, Cylon raiders, black bats against a gleaming cosmic setting, flew on and off.

The damage to the window and outer hull that her attack with the raptor had caused, had been restored, but many of the body pods were still empty and occasional darkened burns marked the glistening metallic framework of the area.

Near the middle of the compartment there was a discontinuity in the line. Two boxes were missing. When she came closer, she saw a small corridor that led to an area behind the stacked rows. She looked around. No one, but Buster. She stepped inside.

It was darker behind the rows, but not too dim to see that the passage led to a small area where five body capsules were positioned around a single resurrection tub. Cavils, no doubt, held at the ready for resurrection.

The glassy cover of the nearest pod revealed the muscled body of a square jawed young man with short blond hair. Not a Cavil; not even a fifty years younger Cavil would have looked anything as handsome as this. There was something faintly familiar about him, she was almost sure she had seen the young man before, but where? And when?

She closed her eyes, and shifted through faces in the citizens in the Fleet, the men of the _Galactica_ , the faces at Adar's presidential office and even features of her former students back at Caprica, but none resembled this young man close enough to give her an impression of recognition.

Was this the missing Seven? Had Cavil boxed the Sevens and hidden them in plain sight, in the compartment his own bodies were stored in, the compartment she had almost destroyed with her brash anti-Cavil suicide flight?

The message of the Hybrid seemed to indicate a more permanent damage to the Sevens. The Hybrid thought him lost forever.

She tapped quietly on the glass panel and went to the next metallic casing. It held a darker skinned young woman, beautiful and nameless, with long waving black hair, pert breasts, almond eyes and a nose not dissimilar from Laura's own. Was she another experiment of Cavil, a new line of Lauras with mixed DNA, or maybe an attempt to create a new female model?

Buster stood nearby as an immovable statue, its restless red eye swishing from left to right, but in the distance, steps clacked, echoing through the hall she had just left, advancing with robotic exactitude, alarming her to the possibility of getting caught trespassing in Cavil's private section.

She glanced around her, looking for a place to hide, but the room was built for Cylon efficiency, not for human interaction. It lacked corners, cozy or otherwise, and furniture other than the necessary pods and the resurrection tub, so she ducked behind the case the dark haired woman reclined in and held her breath.

A centurion entered the clearing, its long statue casting a shadow over and between the pods, its measured steps ominous as Cavil himself, its well-oiled joints moving almost like a human.

It passed her by.

It left.

Belatedly, she realized that Buster had been standing there in plain sight. She wondered whether centurions distinguished each other as individuals and if Buster's presence was not only noticed but would also be reported to those who could harm her, one of the few Cavils currently alive at the Hub.

After the centurion had receded to the far end of the room and silence had returned, she stood, cast a crooked grin at Buster, and walked to the next pod. She gasped.

Chief Tyrol!

Her hand rested heavily on the glass cover. Her mouth opened and she struggled not to look away.

There was no doubt about it, laying on his back in this hard metal pod, undressed, his short brown hair combed flat against his skull instead of his usual tousled shock, his torso somewhat slimmer than she remembered, was Bill's chief mechanic, the man who kept the vipers flying, the man who ensured every ship's FTL drive was in working condition so that they could escape the minute the Cylons showed up, the man who had had an elicit relation with the Boomer Eight, the pilot who had shot Bill – Galen Tyrol, who had been a Cylon model all along!

In the far end of the adjacent hall the gravely voices of two Cavils, arguing, moved in her direction, unhurriedly.

"She shot her last copy herself," one Cavil said.

"She is making progress then, or she wouldn't have needed to do that," the other one answered.

"We haven't been doing so badly ourselves," the first one said.

"The modified Strand 32 seems more compliant. Maybe we should field test her."

"Send her to the humans, already?"

"We'll reprogram the raptor so that she cannot fly it into the Hub again."

Laura had to get out of here, she could not be found by the two of them, not now she knew the one secret they had guarded so fervently, even for their own brethren. Laura walked to Buster and whispered: "Back to my quarters, unseen."

Buster put its iron hand on her shoulder, bent to draw an arm under her knees and lifted her. She stifled her cry. Her centurion was right; it was an infinitely faster model than she was.

"Go," she whispered.

* * *

 _Galactica's_ brig]

Bill heaved, sweat streaming down his face and chest. He'd donned his uniform jacket, and pulled his shirt from his pants with urgency.

This Laura had a physical prowess the dying leader never had. It had been liberating in its own way: not to hold back, not to be careful, and be free to notice how she enjoyed that too, but he wasn't as young as she and he used his moment of undressing to catch his breath.

She looked at him over her shoulder. "Oh Bill," she said with remorse in her voice.

"Just give me a minute."

"Untie me, and we'll do this in a more laid back way." Her voice was deep and sweltering, full of promises, and undeniably Laura's; a voice so full of intimacy, of knowing him, desiring nobody else but him. A voice too that he would gradually help raising to the crescendo of agonized desire he would extract from her before he would allow her to come, her orgasm convulsing around him, dragging him with her in their long overdue release.

"No," he said

"Don't make me order you, Commander," she insisted in a dark and dangerous tone every inch the President he once served.

"Hah!"

She'd stopped kicking, he saw. He grinned, stepping in close, burying his nose in her lusciously copper hair, his hands sliding up her hips and finding purchase on her breasts.

A soft moan escaped his prisoner, a shudder running up her spine and she dropped her head back until it rested against the side of his head. Her elevated breathing accelerated his own need, the scent of her arousal quickening his pulse.

"Do you surrender?" he growled near her ear.

Her hummed acquiescence vibrated from her back to his chest; her head moving forward in the slightest of nods, her ear brushing his ear.

With a deep sigh he turned her head towards his, brushing her soft lips with his own and he kissed her, deep and hungry, the awkward position, the craning of her neck, the impossibilities of the kiss adding fuel to his desire.

She moved her hips against him, circling her behind against his hardened shaft in a most unsustainable way, extracting an aggravated rumble from him.

He stepped closer, immobilizing her against the wireframe, determined to make her beg first.

A deafening siren blared through the brig.

Bill froze and felt Laura tense against him/

"Commander to the Shuttle Deck!" Dee's voice echoed against the walls. "Commander to the Shuttle Deck!"

An aggravated whimper escaped his prisoner.

He pressed himself against her, sharing her frustration, wondering what the emergency was, understanding that Saul was in sickbay and that he himself would have to respond to the crisis.

"You want me to untie you while I'm gone?" he whispered in her hair.

She shook with laughter, a rich, full and guttery laugh. "Please," she then said with mock meekness.

He stepped back, put his shirt back on and carefully zipped his pants.

"I'll think about it," he told her.

"Bill!"

He chuckled.

"Bill?"

The blaring siren indicated urgency, so he unwrapped the bindings that kept her to the wires quickly.

She rubbed her pulses.

"I believe this is yours." He handed her her bra and her shirt and walked over to the telephone, picking up his uniform jacket from the floor and sliding into it on the way.

"Adama," he said.

"Another unknown raptor just arrived, sir," Dee said.

Bill's abdominal muscles tightened. He cast a furtive glance at Laura, who had dressed herself and was combing her lush hair with her fingers, the bandage around her neck a white beacon against her flustered skin.

"How is she?" he asked Dee.

"We don't know that, sir, the hatch is still closed."

"Post armed guards, get the Chief to open it, get Cottle there. I'm on my way."

He put the horn back and looked at Laura, wondering how much would be wise to tell her.

"Number two?" she asked. Of course she'd understood.

"Probably."

"How is she?"

"We don't know yet. Do you want to come?"

She shook her head.

"You want to stay here?"

"In the brig?" she raised a brow.

Saul stepped over the threshold, white faced, his head bandaged.

Bill shook his head at the sight of his friend's injury, his anger subsided, while at the same time understanding that the swiftness of Saul's appearance in the brig had to mean he had been close, too close -

Bill glanced at Laura, and saw she understood too, but she shrugged, signaling him to move past it.

"Why don't you go to his quarters?" Saul suggested to Laura. "You'd be out of the way, and it's where he wants you anyway."

Bill's fists clenched at the tone of Saul's voice.

Laura gently placed her hand on Bill's arm, "I'll wait for you in your quarters, Bill. We'll talk later."

"Escort her," Bill bristled at Saul. He didn't want to risk the reaction of the uninformed to this new Cylon model ambling freely through the corridors.

Laura eyed Saul with apprehension. "That's okay, Bill, I know the way," she said.

"You can't," Bill countered.

He yanked the horn from the receiver. "Dee? Have Lieutenant Thrace report to the brig and escort the Pres -, prisoner to my quarters."

There was a stunned silence.

"Very well, Sir."

.

.

END OF PART II

* * *

Author's Comments:

Halfway through this story, I'm going on a hiatus.

Never fear, a good 10k words of part 3 and part 4 have already been written and will be posted later, but personal circumstances (pleasant ones, actually) make it impossible to keep up with the rigorous 1 chapter/2 scenes a week schedule I have been keeping so far.

Thank you so much for reading and commenting.  
You have been a source of inspiration.


	20. Part III Chapter 20

Thanks for your patience and your friendly comments.

We left Bill and Galactica!Laura in the brig, their little play interrupted by Dee calling the Commander to the Hangar Bay where a new unknown raptor has /  
Hub!Laura has just discovered that the Cavils have hidden five stored bodies ready for resurrection, and had time to check out three of them (a blond young man, a dark haired young woman and Chief Tyrol).

That ended part II.

And now the continuation...

* * *

PART III

[Resurrection Hub]

Buster held up her hair while she heaved above a bowl Ben had served salad in not so long ago, his other iron paw solid and cold against her back, stroking it in slow circles. Sweat cooled on her forehead; the contrast with her heated neck added to her nausea, as did the acid taste in her mouth. She fought the wave, but convulsion lurched upwards, irresistibly, and she retched and vomited again. What had she eaten yesterday?

The four Leobens had cooked and invited her over, creating an atmosphere of easy camaraderie, not unlike a university dorm, sharing wine; their philosophic meandering adding to the campus feeling. She'd enjoyed their interplay of speculations, at times surprised by the depth of their musings, and had stayed to sleep in their place, in the arms of Ben, the first Leoben who had befriended her and had never stopped trailing her. It was a guilty pleasure, withdrawing in that snug almost human place, pretending for a few hours that this hub, this stronghold of steel, crowded with automatons, did not exist.

Maybe there was something obsessive about Ben's pursuit of her, but his skills exceeded most other men she'd ever slept with, including Adar. She wouldn't compare Ben with Bill, not even in the privacy of her thoughts. Bill was a category of his own with their shared love, their mutual history and joint responsibilities. Shifting Bill to another league may have been a way to keep her image of him safe, to prevent the tireless Cylon his win, but she shrugged off the thought. Bill was her past, forever out of reach.

Buster placed a hand under her elbow and with careful attention coaxed her to stand, steadying her when she swooned and leading her back to her bed with the insistence of a school nurse.

.

* * *

.

[ _Galactica_ , Hangar Deck, Raptor]

The steel of the rigid raptor deck chilled Laura's calves and her back, the iciness leaching the warmth out of her until she was as cold as she'd been in the last days of her cancer. Sure that it was the foreshadowing of death, she welcomed it as an old friend.

The soft whoosh of the raptor hatch unsealing edged in through the murky haze. The clang of the feet that trod onto the deck not far from her legs reverberated through her head with painful insistence. She bit back a moan. A whiff of tobacco and the professional cool hand to her throat indicated it was Cottle himself who knelt down next to her.

"She's cut her wrists," his gruff voice cautioned.

Floating fitfully at the brink of consciousness, she wearily recognized that she had failed. There was no backup plan. She'd tried to airlock herself from the raptor, in vain; she'd tried to knock herself out against the raptor wall, which had been inconceivably painful, but without success; she'd tried to strangle herself, all to no avail. Cutting her wrists with a pulled-out piece of wiring had been a desperate last moment inspiration when she saw that the autopilot flew her to _Galactica_ 's landing bay. And now that had failed too.

Cottle's hands wrapped cloth over her left wrist in a controlled but rapid pace, and then moved to the right one.

"Stay with us, young lady."

Outside, on the Hangar Deck, a crowd prattled; faces she would probably recognize on sight; people who might expect her to be the real deal, the Roslin they knew. She willed herself back to oblivion; the disillusion of her failure, the dread of the inevitable things to come were too agonizing to face. A needle pierced her upper arm.

"There," Cottle said.

The sound of the crowd fell to a whisper. A single set of footsteps strode up the metal ramp, confident and heavy with purpose. They stopped at her side. The group outside fell silent as if they held their breath. Clothes rustled and someone crouched down next to her. She smelled him before he picked up her hand and enclosed it between his larger callused ones. How she had failed.

"Laura?" Bill's voice nudged her, with a warmth that he reserved for her.

Her lips tightened in dejection.

The responding extra pressure of his hands told her he'd seen the minute twitch and that he knew her too well for her to hide behind closed eyes. She tried to open them for his sake, but her eyelids were leaden, so she settled for a squeeze of his hand, giving herself over to the unexpected, unfounded, wistful notion that now that _he_ was here, everything might be alright after all. It couldn't be. It hadn't even been that way for the original Laura, but the notion was too potent to let go of, too comforting not to accept with at least a part of her being. She smiled hazily. His thumb brushed the back of her hand.

Three sets of hands lifted her onto a gurney and she was carried out of the raptor, down the ramp, feet first. Bill strode alongside her.

"If you're done with the handholding, Commander, we can get her to Life Station," Cottle muttered.

Bill gave her fingers a final squeeze and let go.

"To Life Station, on the double," Cottle bristled. "This one has lost a lot of blood."

 _This one?_

She tried to jog her memory as to why that sentence caused her stomach to twitch uncomfortably, but whatever had been in the injection took over and she floated off into a dreamless void.


	21. Chapter 21

[Resurrection Hub, Cavil's Resurrection Section]

Buster strode away from her, past the rows of stored Cavils, checking the area for conscious ones walking about, while she paused at the entrance of the hall, glancing over her shoulder into the curved corridor, listening to the soft whirling sound of the living hub. Would the hybrid know what they were doing?

No one in sight, not even Ben. He was rarely far from her, but she didn't want him to see this yet and she certainly didn't want to share her discovery with any of the other models. It would stagger the Threes with their fascination for the missing five, and when the Twos and Sixes found out, the Cylon power structure would probably shift. It would become inescapable that the humanoid models' limited and specific memory loss had been inflicted on them by Cavil; that he had tampered with their programming; that he had been hiding five of their models, and that his was the worst kind of dictatorship. All under the guise of one-model one-vote equality.

Why had he done it? Was it solely hunger for power? She had to understand Cavil's game before she could effectively disrupt it. She had to know more. She'd only seen three of the five models. Would the unknown two turn out to be undercover Cylons as well, like the Chief, people she'd met in the Fleet and thought of as humans?

What if one was Captain Apollo? With his drive for perfection Lee Adama would be a picture-perfect robot, and for that same reason it could hardly be expected that Lieutenant Thrace was in one of the two capsules. A cantankerous capricious machine was a contradiction in terms, which left out Colonel Tigh as well, as a drunken robot would be a showcase of bad design and insufficient testing, but Baltar… Baltar being a Cylon that would make a great deal of sense. She swallowed against a wave of nausea. Tension, no doubt.

It had crossed her mind that one of the two remaining pods might hold a Bill copy. Baltar's Cylon detector had cleared Bill, but the device had exonerated Boomer too.

Having Bill here with her in the Hub…. It was a furtive hope, but one that had grown in the past few days while she'd been avoiding Cavil's Resurrection Section for fear of detection.

From the middle of the room, Buster motioned the coast was clear. She hastened to him, took the turn into the small corridor, past the pod with the able-bodied blond young man, past the dark haired girl, past Chief Tyrol, to the fourth body capsule and looked inside.

In the casing rested, in glorious beauty, the bare body of Ellen Tigh, her waist slim, her blond curls spread around her head like an aura.

Laura's jaw dropped and her shoulders slumped. _Ellen?_.

Of course, the woman had been suspected to be a Cylon when she first appeared out of the blue, but once Laura had gotten to know her the idea that the frolicsome, whimsical, unpredictable flirt could have been programmed, had become absurd. But here she was, undeniably Ellen Tigh. Without the usual tasteless dresses concealing her features, it was obvious that her Cylon creator had outdone himself with this design of female perfection. He must have had an ingenious mind, great human insight, and unconventional cutting-edge programming skills too, to accomplish this.

Would the Ellen in the Fleet know she was a Cylon? It was obvious that Colonel Tigh didn't. He hated Cylons almost as much as he was smitten with his personal copy of this model.

Bill probably ought to be informed that his XO was sleeping with the enemy.

What would happen if Laura took Ellen with her when she updated Bill of this development, the evidence in tow? Laura smiled at the prospect. One Ellen was already more trouble than Bill wanted and now there could potentially be a million copies… Colonel Tigh's reaction would worth watching too, when he was confronted with his wife's twin. Laura chuckled and walked to the last body pod.

She faltered – halted – froze.

Maybe Tigh's reaction wouldn't be what she had expected.

In the fifth pod, on his back, naked as the others, sporting a small gray sailor's beard, lay a flawless copy of Saul Tigh.

Laura sight shifted, blurred; she saw him and then she didn't, while the world slowed down to a trickle. Bill's oldest friend, the man he trusted implicitly despite his obvious failings, the man he'd fought alongside for decades, the man who'd always had his back - _that_ man was a Cylon.

She abhorred the prospect of telling Bill. It would crush him as surely as her own death had done - though for herself, this find may be a chance.

A Tigh copy was more than just a clandestinely hidden model, more than a lever to trigger a Cylon uproar against the Cavils. No, a Tigh copy may be able to tip the scales right here and now. The bond between Bill and Saul had been reciprocal. Tigh thought the world of Bill, Tigh would die for Bill, Laura had no doubt about that. Maybe, just maybe, she'd found the one person on this Hub who would support Bill as much as she did, the one person that could really be her ally.

She wavered, looking up at Buster for guidance. He swished his red eye from left to right and back, awaiting her orders. Awakening this Tigh might not be harder than resurrecting the Roslins she had roused in the past.

She unlocked the pod, opened the lid and eyed the resurrection tub that was placed so conveniently in the center of the five pods.

No. Not here. Not where any second a Cavil could appear.

"Pick him up," she said to Buster, "we're taking him home."

.

* * *

.

[Colonial One, President's Office]

"So, you released the prisoner from the brig and put her…..," Baltar raised a brow in insinuation, "….where?" The pretender sat behind Laura's desk as if he owned it, his eyes alive with innuendo.

"You heard me." Bill folded his hands together, trying to keep a firm grip on his impatience. Briefing the president was one of the chores he rather delegated to Lee, but this time that was impossible. He'd known relocating Laura to his quarters might cause waves. He'd simply have to wait them out.

Baltar glanced to his left as if listening.

"Is that altogether ethical?" he then asked.

Bill bit back his reply, stepped toward the desk, close enough to pull the puppet president over the table if he only stretched out his arms. He was not going to indulge him in a game of ethics, not this pawn without moral compass. Baltar pressed himself against the back of Laura's chair.

"Uhh … what I meant is… actually … ," Baltar swallowed, "…why would anyone want a thing like that?"

Trying to regain his equilibrium, Bill stared down at him a bit longer, until Baltar fidgeted like a cadet caught drunk on duty.

"She has recent tactical knowledge of the Cylons' plans and actions," Bill explained at a slow pace. "We work together on a strategy to stop the Cylons from sending us more Roslin copies."

He hoped it sounded plausible. He could hardly say he needed and wanted his partner back, the one soul in the universe he could level with, the woman who sustained him with her presence alone.

Baltar's eyes flicked to his left again, and then, to Bill's surprise, he nodded.

"I hear a second Roslin copy has arrived," Baltar said.

"She's in Sickbay." Cottle had reported the new one was healing well and that he would release her soon.

"When she recovers," Baltar said, "I'd like that copy to be sent to me."

Bill's muscles tightened. "Why?"

"I am the foremost specialist regarding the Cylon subspecies of the human race. Studying a living copy of their latest model would be beneficial for humanity's understanding of Cylon technology and progress."

It sounded plausible but Baltar's eyes brimmed with a different hunger and his demeanor spoke of scenarios Bill would not allow any Laura to be subjected to.

"No," he said.

"I'm the President of the Colonies," Baltar insisted.

Bill hummed noncommittedly.

"As I understand it, the number of Roslins that the Cylons can send us is infinite," Baltar continued. "You don't have enough brig space to hoard them all."

Bill didn't intend to place the new one in the brig and watch over its suicidal phases again. He couldn't brave the exhausting ordeal a second time. The whole damn process was far too slow for his purposes, for the plan that was gradually maturing in his head.

"No, we don't have that much brig space," he agreed. The best place for a new suicidal Laura would be with the first Laura, the one that finally understood how her death would play into Cavil's hands, the Laura who _now_ wouldn't even kill herself if he returned her the side arm.

It was a risk, of course. This new one looked different, as mature as the original Laura, and her programming was an unknown factor altogether. He'd have to rely on the first Laura to bring the second one about.

And that first one, the one that acted like his Laura, talked like his Laura, and finally connected with him like his Laura – with her he wanted to finish what she had started in the brig, as soon as he could end this briefing.

"Then give me the next one," Baltar said.

Never, Bill thought. "I'll quarter them on the Galactica," he said.

"How many Roslins do you need, for intelligence purposes?" A note of a whine crept into his voice.

Bill shrugged, distracted. It had just occurred to him that if he kept the first Laura in his quarters, as he fully intended to do, the second one would have to stay there too, for the first one to be able to keep an eye her.

He exhaled, disgruntled. He couldn't possibly frak her while the new one slept on his couch. He'd be blocked from making love to Laura - by Laura. He had painted himself into a corner.

Bill groaned.

"What?" huffed Baltar, as if Bill's grunt had been an assessment of his presidency. "Is it so strange I want one of them too?"

Suddenly, Baltar's head rushed forward - downward, as if pushed by an invisible hand, his forehead bumping onto the presidential desk, hitting the wood hard. He cried out in pain but kept his head down, against the desk, as if an invisible magnet kept him glued to the bureau.

The hair in Bill's neck stood on end.

"Really?" Baltar wailed exasperated. "You're jealous? Now?"

Bill decided to ignore the infantile protest. Jealousy didn't even begin to cover what he felt when it came to sharing Laura with Baltar. It was not going to happen.

"I'll make the arrangements," Bill said, deliberately abstruse, turning to leave. As he walked to the curtain, he heard Baltar mutter frustrated objections behind his back.

Bill ignored him. An idea how to solve his multiple Laura fix had emerged in his head and a slow smile curled his lips upward.

Now, how would he convince the Lauras?

* * *

Thanks for the inspiring comments

Next time: RST at last.


	22. Chapter 22

[ _Galactica_ , Commander's Quarters]

Laura raised her head when he entered the hatch to his quarters and smiled her welcome. She'd made herself comfortable on his couch, reading one of his novels, as she'd done of old. He feasted his eyes on her. Their interrupted lovemaking had fueled the hunger building since the day she'd emerged in that raptor, the day he had decided to disobey her, to keep her alive. Getting her out of her prison get-up was a priority.

He rubbed his eyes and steadied himself. First, they needed to be on the same page about the second Laura.

"I left the brig just in time?" she asked.

"I'm not putting her there." He shrugged off his jacket and walked to his closet.

"Oh?"

He draped the jacket over its hanger and fingered the green dress that hung close to it. "The point is to keep her from killing herself."

"From killing _you_."

It skidded off him. Any Laura that tried to kill herself to avoid landing on _Galactica_ was far from a perfect Cylon operative, and this new one was the mirror image of the woman he'd lost. She was Laura Roslin, wrinkles and all. She would never kill him.

"The brig process takes too long," he said, "and is too risky. You would have shot yourself, wouldn't you, once you had that gun?"

She watched him from under her eyelids, her silence all the answer he needed, but then she nodded, once. He hadn't doubted it; the question had been for her benefit, to help her to understand his plan.

"And you would have told the Cylons everything you knew about the Fleet, after you were resurrected," he stated - not an accusation, just a certainty.

She looked away, considering it. "I don't think Cavil can read my mind," she said, "but he has old-fashioned means of persuasion which he uses unrestrainedly, with resurrection readily available."

Bill tried not to wince at her matter-of-fact summary, or to dwell on the brutality it shrouded. It would never come to that again; he'd see to it. He took the green dress from his closet and showed it to her.

Her face lit up. "You got it back?"

Most of her belongings she'd given away before her death, but the sight of another woman wearing this dress had shattered him, and he'd asked Kara to buy it for him.

Leaving the dress over his desk chair for now, he walked over to the crystal decanter, filled two glasses with water and brought one over to her.

She accepted it with a nod, cradling the glass, turning it about in her alabaster hand, considering it with a curious intensity, mesmerized, as if it meant more to her than just a simple beverage. The unbidden urge to take it away pushed the air out of his lungs, but he couldn't think of a reason, so he raised his water and drank, feeling the cool liquid tumbling down inside him, while he studied her, waiting for her to do the same. After an endless moment, she grimaced at her glass, took a sip and looked up.

"So what will we do with her?" she asked. It warmed him that she included herself in his team.

"Attach and Reason," he said with a firm nod. He'd thought it out on the way back to his quarters and was quite pleased with the plan. If only he knew how to convince the two women.

She cocked her head in question.

"She has to want to be alive," he pointed out.

"Sure." She looked nonplussed. "So?"

"She needs convincing that living is better than suicide," he said.

Her mouth quirked with doubt. "By 'Attach and Reason'?" Irony colored her voice and her expression mirrored Laura's reaction at his refusal to take the Cylon detector test, way back when they'd hardly known each other.

He sat down on the couch next to her, instantly aware of her scent. "I can't guard her day and night," he said, taking her hand in his, savoring the delicacy of its form, the smoothness of her skin.

"I've neglected my duties since you arrived. That has to stop. We're under attack."

She nodded in unreserved agreement as if the Fleet still came first for her too. The warmth of her thigh trickled through the fabric of his uniform pants, and he looked down, saw his knee pressing against hers, their arms touching from elbow to shoulder. He lifted his gaze to her face, only to find her eyes sparkling at him.

He smiled back, raising her hand, kissing her palm, never losing eye contact until her lashes fluttered. It goaded him into doing it again, urging his lips to travel over the skin of her hand, following her index finger to the tip, reading his clues from the vulnerability that passed over her face, until her breathing stuttered.

He stopped himself. First things first.

She regarded him, a question in her eyes.

"I need to get back to leading the Fleet. You, however, have time on your hands," he said. "You understand her. And you understand why killing herself is not an option."

Her lips became a thin line; her hand froze in his.

"She's your sister, so to speak," he pressed on. "Who could guard and guide her better than you?" His fingers itched to follow the contour of her lips, or to kiss her, to smooth them, to soften the line. Yes.

He'd better shave. He emptied his glass, put her hand back on her own knee, stood and walked toward the head.

Behind his receding back, he heard her huff, but he stepped inside nevertheless, opened the tap and splashed cool water in his face, clearing his mind.

"Aren't you afraid we'll conspire to kill you and destroy the Fleet in the process?" she ventured from the sofa, sounding for all intents and purposes as if it was her plan.

He grabbed a towel. Still wiping his face, he peeked out of the head, only to find her sitting demurely on his couch, the model of a schoolteacher, trustworthy and unadventurous. Oh, Laura.

She raised her brows at him in question.

"I go with what I know," he said, burying his doubt.

"I don't know if _I_ can be trusted, let alone this new one. So how can you? She'll be an improved prototype. Cavil has had more time to prep her." It was true, of course, but it couldn't be helped.

"When a healthy, undamaged Laura arrives, that's when we'll start worrying," he said. Of course, it was only his gut feeling, but his instinct had saved him more than once, and in thornier situations. So he went with it. No need to tell her that. He needed her in on this.

She pursed her lips, brooding, reminding him of his plan to smooth that line. He turned back into the head and covered his jaw with soap.

"Lock us up," she demanded from right behind him.

In the mirror he saw her leaning against the hatch frame, her red hair a colorful inflection in the otherwise grey-toned picture her clothes and his bulkheads made. Her tresses shone, reflecting the lights in the head. The skin of his hands sang songs about the silken feeling of carding his fingers through her hair. Soon.

Did she know the effect she was having on him? The leverage she could pull? She was as precious to him as air; his life had started again when she arrived. She'd transformed his world from a despondent duty to the promise of imminent happiness. She ruled over his universe and he was happy to have her there.

"I can't collect a growing crowd of disgruntled suicidal Cylons in the brig." Talking while shaving, he almost cut himself and took the razor off of his chin.

"And," he continued, "I can't kill you. Or any copy of you." He hoped that much was clear. "So I need you both to reconnect with the life Laura led within the Fleet. We have to create a viable future for all Lauras or we won't be able to keep them alive."

She looked at him with half-hooded eyes, her mind dissecting his plan like she had done when she still was his President, testing it, looking for holes, discovering the long term consequences.

Slowly, her brows rose. "To win this gamble, you'd have to win the war. You do know that, don't you, Bill?" She shook her head at the impossibility of the scenario. "There are over a million Twos, Sixes, Eights and there could be just as many Lauras in the end. If you won't kill us, you'll have to stop that flood, or you'll be swamped with copies of me, in the brig or elsewhere."

"Exactly," he said, glad she saw the implications that had eluded Saul. "It's a new stack of cards. By creating you, the Cylons have changed the war. Earth can no longer be our sole objective. It won't suffice. The Cylons must be stopped from creating Roslins too. And you're going to help me do that." He paused. "All of you."

"With Operation 'Attach and Reason'?"

He hadn't convinced her yet.

"I," he said with a smile, "will do the attaching. You will do the reasoning." He grinned at her apologetically. Attaching was, after all, the enjoyable part of his plan and he'd stuck her with the difficult part: reasoning with Roslins.

He'd not anticipated the flash of peeved jealousy on her face. She crossed her arms over her chest. "You want to exchange me for a newer model, already?"

"Ah." Her pained expression stung him. He ought to have been more candid with her, but he'd hoped she'd understand it without him spelling out the embarrassing details.

He put the razor down, wiped his chin and turned toward her, stepping close, and lifting her chin with his thumb. "That's not the plan," he said, catching her eyes.

She watched him silently, hiding behind the shield of detachment she'd always summoned when she expected bad news.

"Any Laura, alone in the Fleet, will feel uprooted," he said. "Suicide will soon seem the better option."

She stood, immobile and unmoved, scrutinizing him. "So?"

Heat crept up his neck. He saw her watching it and he cleared his throat. "So, I'll keep you both." There. He'd said it.

Her eyes went from his bunk to his couch and back at him. "Both? In here?" She seemed as displeased as he himself had been when he first considered the inclusion of a third person in his quarters.

"Three's a crowd," she said.

"Not necessarily." The solution had struck him when he'd flown back from Colonial One. Her diaries had spoken of a more diverse experience than they'd explored together. His solution had become inescapable, soon after he realized what that meant.

She watched him silently as she mulled over his words, then caught her breath. There was a flash of indignant petulance on her face.

"Really?" she asked.

"It's up to you, of course. And up to her," he said, "but if she's got Laura's memories, if she has Laura's affections, she won't be totally indifferent to me." He tried not to sound smug and knew from the way her forehead scrunched that he'd failed, but the idea of more than one of her in his arms, once he realized it was practically inevitable, had made him come alive with new energy and with a whole range of interesting scenarios.

She stepped back, with a flicker of amusement in her eye. "You want to - ?"

He shrugged it off as if it was a little thing, a sacrifice to keep her copies alive, but he saw he didn't fool her, so he grinned crookedly admitting he was thinking what she knew he was thinking.

A ripple of laughter ran through her and her face split open with glee. "You're dreaming, Bill Adama." But she didn't seem to be unfavorable to the notion though and certainly wasn't shocked by the idea; she attempted not to laugh out loud.

He felt himself beaming from ear to ear in response.

That sparked her mirth, and she folded over, choking on her giggles. She took hold of the head's hatch, looking up at his face, waving a hand at him as if shooing him away, out of breath, as if begging him to stop goading her into this powerless puddle of laughter.

It was hard to imagine how he could have forgotten the way she could lose herself in spontaneous humor. He soaked it up, trying to imprint every detail of her helpless merriment in his brain.

As she came out of it, hiccoughing, attempting to catch her breath, tears still rolling down on her cheeks, he said with what he hoped sounded like proper rational reasoning. "War College 202: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

She laughed outright at that. "It seems more like that other Law to me."

He raised his brows, at a loss.

"'War College 101: If all else fails, enjoy yourself'."

Caught, he smiled askance. "That too," he said. There was, in the end, no guarantee whatsoever his strategy would work.

"Would you mind?" he asked.

She shrugged, undecided but not unfriendly. "Me, with you and that woman?"

"She is, after all, you," he said.

"From where I'm standing, she's a distinctly different person," she replied soberly. "I'm here, she's there." Laura pointed in the general direction of Sickbay. "And only the Gods know what program Cavil and Simon have embedded in her."

He rubbed his face with a towel and stepped closer. "So, what do you think?"

"You place yourself and the Fleet squarely at our mercy. You make it our responsibility not to kill you."

She had spotted the core of it. Responsibility had ensnared the old Roslin and he hoped it would turn these new ones too.

"Could you?" he said. "Kill me?" It was impossible not to ask.

She blinked, for just a second wide-eyed, then she nodded, acknowledging the significance of the question, straightening herself and studying him impassively, tilting her head as if considering his question, her eyes drifting over his face, his chest, downward.

He watched her for hidden clues.

The gleam in her eye, the way her eyes lingered at his crotch, gave her away before she licked her lower lip and took a step toward him.

"Maybe not," she said, a played presidential flatness in her tone, "if you would make yourself useful ..." Her finger trailed down over his chest.

"Laura?"

The sparkle left her eyes and she quietly shook her head, both her hands flat against his chest.

"I don't know, Bill. I really don't know."

She wove her arms around his neck, the cold tip of her nose skimming his cheek. Leaning into her, one of his hands found purchase in her hair and the other pressed into the small of her back, enjoying the softness of her breasts against his chest.

Was there even an answer she could give? Could she know? Sharon hadn't known she would shoot him beforehand, he was sure.

He'd cast the dice. Now, he'd have to see how they fell.

His hand lost itself in the opulence of her hair. She sighed softly, melting against him. Her teeth nibbled at his earlobe, her hand stroked the hair at the base of his neck, her nails grazing the base of his skull.

He was half erect from her scent and the pressure she exerted alone and he felt her answering smile on his skin when she kissed his temple and nuzzled his closed eyelids.

"Come," he murmured in her hair. He took her hand and led her out of the head to his rack.

She glanced over the small space that had once been theirs, looked him in the eye and with slow deliberation pulled her shirt over her head. Her breasts sprang free and his mouth dried at their dancing, knowing he was allowed to touch, to play, that she invited him to.

She tugged at his shirt. "Bill," she said impatiently.

He sat down on the edge of his rack, raised his arms, and let her do the work.

With a twinkle in her eyes she did, then stepped away from him, casting the shirts carelessly on the ground, before pushing down her sweat pants, taking her panties with them. When she rose, naked as Venus from the shell, his eyes roamed her body, the flatness of her belly, the curve of her hips, the perfection of her legs, and the delta between them. His chest swelled. He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat and found he couldn't.

Graceful as a ballerina, she advanced upon his position, stepped between his knees. He charted the supple skin of her hip with his fingertips, tugging her nearer, bringing her breasts closer to his mouth.

The thought of kissing them, sucking, biting her nipple, and eliciting her telltale moans blossomed, but when her breasts were an inch from his lips, he leaned into them, turning his head. The tissue was soft under his cheek and -

he was back in the raptor with her, seven months before, about to wrap the explosives around her torso, minutes before their grim goodbye.

He tensed abruptly, tried to cover his shaky breathing and not to cling to her, but his fingertips pressed hard on her flesh and his heart hammered in his chest. Her breath stirred his hair and her finger caressed his earlobe as if she knew where his mind had gone. She hummed a small comforting note that resonated through her chest, until the warm assurance of her living body seeped through his senses, and the soft tone of her voice soothed him, assuring him that she was here, really here.

"Bill"?"

Through a haze, blinking against the tears, he looked up at her. "Laura?"

Her lips brushed his forehead and, holding on to his shoulders, she confidently climbed him, straddled him, raising his chin with her hand so he could find her mouth and then she kissed him, open mouthed, tenderly exploring him, sighing into it, distracting him from his loss.

Even through the scent of prison soap she tasted like Laura. By some miracle Cavil had sent him the one thing he needed, the one person who could sustain him.

His open hands roved over the soft skin of her back, trying to touch all of her, desperate to get her closer still, needing her flesh against his. When she couldn't get any nearer he raised his knees, turned his torso, and lifted her, toppling them both into his rack, side by side. He raised his hip so she could free the leg trapped under him.

Caressing the side of her head, he stroked the hair out of her face, lost in his twirling recollections, her face shifting between the middle aged original, the young one he held in his arms, and back again.

"Laura," he whispered, lost, closing his eyes against the overload.

His pillow, a slice of reality, cold under his ear, brought him back to the present, to the soft hands holding him. He opened his eyes to the green ones creasing in affection for him.

She snuggled closer and kissed his open mouth, then slid a long leg over his hip, setting an unhurried pace with her hips against him that her tongue soon followed.

He groaned in her mouth, his cock straining against his fly, frustrated by its confines, aching for its reward each time she angled her hips just so. He tried to persuade his arms to let go of her to undress himself, but didn't want to lose the sensation of her silky skin of her back under his fingertips.

She chuckled in their kiss and withdrew with a final peck on his lips, pushing him to his back, then scooting down and unbuttoning his pants. He raised his hip so she could slide his pants down his legs. They came to rest on the deck not far from his shirts.

From down below, past his erection, over the path of his scar, she ogled him, wetting her lips, trailing a finger up against the hairs at the inside of his thigh. No shyness, no reservations, no hesitation. They had been here before, just like this, and were only reaffirming what they once had - even though the sight of this remarkable woman yearning to give him head quickened his pulse.

A small hand scooped his balls and the other gripped the base of his cock, angling it towards her lips. He pulled the pillow higher under his head to better watch her.

Her eyes danced. "Any last wishes?"

"Is that the answer?" he exhaled defenselessly. "I will die in erotic bliss, crying out your name?"

She cocked her head, a smile on her lips, while her hand fondled his balls, distracting him into tightening his butt muscles, then shook her head.

"I really don't know, Bill." Her breath gusted against the underside of his cock, sending a shiver up his spine. "I don't feel much different from how I was before, before - ," she faltered. "Younger, but not different. Older and wiser maybe, because of my lives since."

He regretted bringing it up again, sidetracking her just as he'd been pleasantly projecting how she would lick her way from his balls up his cock. His thigh muscle twitched, but she withdrew, raising herself on her elbows, her hand flat on his leg and she looked at him in earnest, her striking eyes vulnerable.

"I'm following rule 101, Bill. It seems the best way to go."

She held his eyes until he relaxed against his pillow again, then she let her tongue swirl over the head in what had been Lauras hallmark way. His hips bucked upward of their own volition, pushing the head over and past her lips and he clenched his fists to call forth his restraint, pressing his hips back against the mattress.

Her hand found his belly and rubbed him soothingly, while her tongue, her lips, and then her throat enveloped him, squeezed and sucked him - ending his thoughts.

He struggled to keep his eyes open, to watch her bobbing head, her hair flowing as she eased him in and out of her mouth, but he had to let go, and leaned back, closing his eyes, surrendering to the sensations. He'd replayed the thrills of her mouth on him in his head these lonely months, but reality flooded him with so much more intensity, and many more dimensions, now that she was really here.

And she was here. She was. His attention sank to the depth of his gut, and there was nothing other than her lips ravaging him, the wet tightness of her throat, the soft noises she made and the swelling of the tension in his balls.

After the buildup of their interrupted lovemaking he would come in a minute if she continued this - probably sooner. That was not how he wanted this, he wanted to come home, slide into the warmth of her, feel her orgasm ripple around him. He wanted her lost and clinging to him almost impossibly close to scattering, if he just –

"Laura," he croaked, his hand stroking her hair.

The coiling tightness around his cock decelerated. Her hooded eyes came up and she gazed at him from between his legs, his tip still between her swollen crimson lips, her hair a disheveled aura around her head, her eyes brimming with love, with wanting him.

He inhaled, storing the picture in his mind.

"Come here," he rumbled.

With a lazy smile she swirled her tongue under the rim one last time, chuckling at the unrestrained buck of his hips, and then let go, moving up and over him on her hands and knees, kissing her way up his belly, having no qualms about pressing his dick solidly between them, stroking it upward with the movement of her flesh as she slowly came to his bidding.

He stiffened at the friction, the constriction, shivered and bit his lips, inundated by a wave of growing tension, but not wanting to come, not yet.

When her nose met his and her lips caressed his mouth, he took hold of her hips and turned her, pinning her under him. She squealed at the sudden move, then giggled as she stretched out under him, opening her legs for him, wrapping her arms around his neck, moving her knees up, angling her hips to meet him, her warm wetness stroking his cock, until she locked her feet behind his back with a suppleness of someone half her age.

His dick travelled through her slick folds, seeking out her heat, drawn to it, and when he found it, he pushed his way in with slow deliberation, past the bones that pulled back his foreskin, and felt how she widened herself under him, opening herself further, until he slid in deeply, all of him, at peace at last, at home.

Tension left his muscles and he sighed, unwilling to move, sinking down on his elbows, his hands beneath her head, and he kissed her, his tongue entering her, her mouth welcoming him. He dissolved into her, trembling, closing his eyes, his body resting against the solid, living warmth of her.

Her hands laced his hair. _Galactica's_ engines hummed, the guard changed in the corridor and they lay entwined, reunited.

When they came apart for air, noses resting together, he saw himself mirrored in her dark pupils. He moved over her, saw her eyes grow vacant, her attention sliding downward just a fraction before her pelvis began turning in slow thoughtless circles, rocking against him, her tightness building a rotating friction, sending jolts up his cock. He slipped into her tempo, adding vertical thrusting to her circular rhythm, almost crying out from the immediacy of the added tension and the inescapability of the memories that washed over him.

He heard her breathless sighs, the mewled needy noises she would deny making later, her eyes locked onto his now, crinkling in pleasure, her mouth slanting open and wet against his, unable to kiss him properly, moaning softly against his lips, pleading with him with her short labored gasps. Her chafing movements lit up his nerves like wildfire.

Sweat was gathering on his lower back. Out of breath, he wheezed and lifted himself enough to ease his hand down between them to cup her, brushing her clit guided by her twitches and by the sudden blazing tactile resurgence of memory of her under him, just so, his body tingling from the building tension, holding onto the last vestiges of not coming, not coming, not yet.

Using the cadence of his thrusts, he relied on his body weight to add the extra pressure she needed, too far gone for a more gracious fingering. She moaned, quivering under him, then bucked, her body convulsing around him, her fingers digging into his shoulder, hanging onto him.

Helpless, he was pulled after her, his restraint shattered and whimpering her name, he let go. The surge took him over the edge, blinded by the blazing flare behind his eyelids, the ringing in his ears deafening him, and he crashed, boneless and spent, ejaculating inside her.


	23. Chapter 23

[Resurrection Hub, Roslin Resurrection Area]

Laura signaled Buster to deposit the limp Tigh copy in her own resurrection tub and strode to the liquid interface table to dig up his download when footsteps emerged behind her. She whirled around. Had Cavil discovered one of the Five was missing, already?

Ben entered, his blond hair sticking out, an olive checkered blouse opened over a grey t-shirt, his sharp blue eyes beaming at her. He had adopted her and was usually not far from her when she woke, when she ate, when she went to bed, and she should have expected him to show up here sooner rather than later.

She wasn't going to tell him of the pregnancy. Not ever. Solving a Cylon procreation problem of this magnitude was just – no. She would terminate it as soon as she found an inconspicuous way to do it. Without Cottle's medical facilities, abortion had become a challenge.

Ben ambled closer, at ease in her quarters, and found a place beside her, his palm loosely on her lower back, a soft hum of welcome in her direction. He eyed the pale limp man in the tub.

"Guard the corridor, Buster," she ordered. She didn't know if the centurion would be able to stop humanoid models, but he was all she had.

"Saul Tigh," Ben said with a bemused frown.

"You know him?!" She'd been convinced Cavil had deleted the knowledge of the five missing models from everyone's memory. What more had she been wrong about?

" _Galactica_ 's XO," Ben shrugged. "The one looking for the river in his ankle flask."

Of course.

"Where did you catch him?" he asked. "And why naked?" Was there an edge of jealousy in his voice?

"Can you fill the tub?" she said.

He looked at her curiously.

"Fill the tub." She had to resurrect Tigh straightaway. Hiding a living man was easier than hiding an unresponsive heavy frame.

Sliding both her hands into the cool liquid interface, she connected with the Hub's mainframe, probing it for Saul's download. Data floated past. It was all related to the human XO, not the Cylon model Tigh. Had she been mistaken? Was Tigh an abductee, the real deal, Bill's best friend? The beard distinguished this one from the man Laura had met in the Fleet, but otherwise he seemed exactly the same.

"Come on," she muttered at the interface.

Reality wavered when Ben entered the mainframe with her. His thoughts shadowed the slipstream of her patterns as she combed deeper layers, more personal layers, layers previously only used by Cavil.

Behind them, a snail's pace, the tub at filled up with gooey fluid, covering Tigh's waist now and crawling up to his chest.

Ben lurched as if seared. He snatched his hands from the stream, almost pulling her with him by the force of it. The wall lights flickered, turning a deeper shade of red.

"Laura!" Ben hissed next to her ear.

She recoiled, jerked her hands out of the liquid and spun towards him, riled. There was no time for this.

Ben's eyes were wide, his breathing high and his gaze switched from her to Tigh, to her, and back to Tigh. "Laura!" he rasped, the bewilderment in his voice mixed with reverence.

"You remembered?" she asked.

"He's the oldest of us all," Ben breathed, his normally keen eyes shaded as he processed the impossible. "The ancient one."

Deeming Tigh ancient seemed farfetched; then again, who knows how often he'd been resurrected before he joined the Service and became Bill's buddy? Was Tigh even his real name?

"I need to find his download. Quickly! Before a Cavil notices," she said.

"Cavil?"

"The Ones held this body in storage."

Ben swore.

"Yes," she said, "quite."

He drove his hands back in the liquid, closed his eyes, lifted his chin as if listening to a whisper in the distance, crumpled his brow while searching. After a minute or so, he halted, blinked his eyes open to stare at her, and inhaled as if about to speak. When she raised her brows in question he shook his head, concentrating once again, until he grimaced and nodded with grim satisfaction.

"There are two different downloads," he said.

"Take the oldest," she decided, realizing Cavil could have been messing with Tigh's programming as he had with hers.

Ben nodded. "Done," he then said.

They turned to the now full tub, scrutinizing the waxen face of Saul Tigh, inert and at peace, waiting for the first signs that the download occupied this shell.

The low, ever present hum of the hub swelled in the background to a deep, almost welcoming, purr and the wall lights flickered to a happier shade of pink.

Tigh's lips stirred, moved against each other, then opened. His teeth delved into his lower lip.

Laura remembered her disorientation the first few times she'd woken up in that tub and bent forward to touch his freckled biceps, gingerly, just a flutter of her fingertips against his skin.

Tigh tensed under her hand. His eyes flickered open, caught hers in their gleam and she withdrew as if she had been caught trespassing. He took her in, his brow furrowed as if he tried to remember something he couldn't quite grasp. His gaze drifted from Laura to Ben to Buster.

"Where's Ellen?" he grated.

* * *

[ _Galactica_ , Sickbay]

"It's pretending not to hear us." Tigh's voice insisted at the foot of her bed. "Again."

"No," Bill breathed from her left side.

"It's awake, I tell you."

"Now she is," Bill said acidly. "Keep your volume down."

"Too late, gentlemen." Her voice croaked. She coughed past it and struggled to open her eyes, to see them.

"Laura?" Bill's hand slipped into hers.

She frowned at his unreserved acceptance of her. He had to know she was a copy, but he treated her as if she was the original. Had Cavil won this battle so effortlessly?

"I'm alright, Bill," she said. _Unfortunately._ She'd have to find a way to end this before he grew even more attached to her. For now, it would be better to move with the flow, to create some operating space. She opened her eyes.

Bill had lost twenty pounds and had turned into a gray haired senior, his too pale face creased with new sharp lines of grief, his eyes bagged; an unhealthy bearing, as if he'd had a sleepless few weeks. To her surprise, he hadn't started the mustache that made him look like an unsavory Tauran mountain bandit. He held onto her hand as if he'd never let go, in wild disregard of her last directive: to shoot her on sight.

"How long has it been?" she asked.

"Seven months and change," Tigh answered.

It had taken only seven months for Bill to age like this? It was a harrowing thought.

His head wrapped in bandages, his face twitching with pain as he spoke, Tigh seemed even more frustrated and protective of Bill than she felt. There was little doubt Tigh would kill her in an instant. If Bill would allow it.

"What did you order again?" Tigh smirked at someone just outside her line of sight, on the right side of her bed. "Airlock all Roslins as soon as they step onto the Galactica?"

 _Would Baltar…?!_

She jerked her head to the right, and looked up at - herself. A much younger self wearing the comfortable green dress Laura had cherished and given away.

"Hello," the woman said.

Laura scrambled to an upright position in the bed. The monitors screeched. The world swirled. Trounced by a head rush, she sank back against the pillows, swooning, exhausted.

Cottle rushed in and snarled that if they wanted to kill his patient they could at least have the courtesy to wait until after she'd left Sickbay, but Laura's thoughts revolved around one thing only. There was another copy here already and Bill hadn't shot it.

Bone tired, she opened her eyes again and stared from Bill to the other one. She admired the coppery waves of the young one's hair and her unblemished skin, making her look almost twenty years her junior.

The woman scrutinized her with as much reserve as Laura felt towards her. She wore a white bandage around her neck, not unlike the bindings Laura found around her wrists. Sliced her throat, did she? Impressive. Why hadn't she thought of that? Then again, the young one had failed too. Obviously.

"You were supposed to shoot us," she reproached Bill.

"M-mm," Bill said as if they were an elderly couple revisiting an argument over the upholstering of their outdated couch.

"Well?" she demanded, not falling for it.

"I didn't shoot her, and I will not shoot you." There was a note of finality in his voice, a dogged determination she knew all too well.

"I'm a danger to the Fleet," Laura pressed. "You don't know my programming, but you can be sure it'll be destructive."

"He doesn't care," Saul said, disapproval in his voice, distaste on his face.

"He doesn't think straight," Laura answered.

"Amen to that."

"Then what is it you want to do with us?" she asked as detached and presidential as she could muster. "What will you do with a growing collection of Laura Roslins? You do understand there will be many more of us, don't you?" She hoped that would jolt him into thinking clearly.

"He does," Tigh said, the weariness in his voice indicating that this was an often revisited, unwinnable argument as well.

She caught Bill's eyes, conveying silently she wouldn't budge any more than she had done when Lieutenant Thrace was missing on that moon, and she noticed a leniency in his features, a mildness in his eyes, an ease in his stance that could only have one cause. She turned to her younger self. Oh, yes, there it was too. He had been freshly frakked. By another woman. By a Cylon!

She glared at him.

Bill blinked at her sudden anger. Surprise. _Hah!_

"You want to start a collection of suicidal, potentially lethal, bed warmers?" she asked, not managing to keep her resentment out of her voice.

Tigh seemed to choke on something. Bill glowered at him, and shifted uncomfortably in his jacket. Cottle brought his cigarette to his lips as if to cover his smirk and the younger one looked at her with new appreciation and something of recognition in her eyes. No one answered her question.

"Well?" she demanded. "What do you plan to do with us?"

Bill inhaled with slow deliberation.

On his exhale, with a minute loosening of his shoulders, just a minor lifting of his chin and a small arch of his brow, he shifted into the taciturn military commander she'd known so well. The deck was his.

"We will fight the Cylons with their own weapons," he said. "That is, with you."


	24. Chapter 24

[Resurrection Hub, Roslin's Resurrection Area]

"Where's Ellen?" Tigh demanded.

Ben watched the older man as if in trance. "Who's Ellen?"

"My wife, your mother," Tigh shot him an impatient look. "Ellen."

Ben shivered. "Father?" he tried the word.

Tigh rolled his eyes.

"Who are you?" he turned to Laura.

There was an authority in his voice that carried a sense of playing with a home advantage, of being the architect of his own destiny, an awareness that had singularly lacked in the smashed Colonel she'd known. This was a different specimen altogether and it seemed he had no recollection of her at all. Maybe she shouldn't have chosen the oldest memories. Too late now.

"I'm Laura Roslin, former President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol."

"A frakking human?"

"Ex-human," she said. "Right now, I'm the Thirteenth Cylon model."

"A human model? Have Ellen and the others gone mad?"

She inhaled to reply, but he forestalled her. "Don't tell me. This was Tory's idea. She always wanted more female models."

"We don't have time for this," Laura stopped him. "The moment Cavil knows you've been resurrected, he'll come after you; and after us, incidentally."

"John?" Tigh asked, his eyes sparkling, much like the colonel's would have, if she'd told him Dualla was coming for him. "Come for _me_?"

"He had you boxed," Ben said, holding open a white bathrobe.

"Boxed?!" Tigh snapped as if it had hit a nerve. Good.

"We'll explain later, right now we have to get you out of sight," Laura stressed.

Tigh sat in the tub, muttering choice obscenities.

"This is your last body," she held out a towel, "so move, please."

Tigh rose from the tub, rubbed himself dry and let Ben help him into the bath robe.

"Where's Ellen?"

Laura ignored him. One Tigh at the time was more than enough.

"Where to?" She sought Ben's eyes. He knew the Hub better than she did. "What place is safe?"

Ben slowly shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the Tigh.

"My quarters, then," she said. "Buster, find us a Cavil free route."

* * *

[Galactica]

After three days, Jack released her from Sickbay. He'd taken care of her as if she was the only Laura he knew and the only copy present in the Fleet - as if they hadn't said their goodbyes months before.

Jack's consistent crankiness, his smoking and the gentle touch of his hands when he examined her, had helped her unwind in the awareness she was among humans again and wouldn't be pestered by Simon's disruptive prodding or Cavil's impertinent experiments on her body and mind.

Jack's insistence on curing her first had soothed the flutter in her stomach that demanded she end this straightaway. She couldn't leave the Fleet just yet, not until she saw to it that Bill would survive and that the other copy harbored no hidden programming. So she waited and listened and watched and learned.

Bill came to collect her at her discharge, in much the same way he'd done before her death, except maybe for his timing. He brought her the clothes she had been wearing on the raptor, cleaned as if they'd never been soaked with blood, and he waited outside the curtains while she dressed.

It was hard not to slip into the familiarity of his company, to give herself over to the feeling of togetherness, especially since Bill unreservedly slipped his hand into hers as if it belonged there, as if he didn't have another Laura wearing her old dresses already.

He guided her through the ship in silence, his steps measured and slower than required. Maybe it was his own waned condition, maybe because he was so accustomed to her being the weaker partner that he slipped into his old concern automatically.

The few people roaming the corridors at this time of night stopped to look at her as they passed, sometimes with affection, sometimes with reserve in their eyes.

She expected it was Bill's hand in hers that stopped them from responding to her presence more directly. Brushing with a slipstream of aversion was harder now it came from humans.

After a while, she recognized the corridors they were passing through and her step faltered.

"Where are you taking me, Bill?"

"Home, Laura, I'm taking you home." There was a sense of hope and finality in Bill's voice, as if he'd lost her and found her again and was restoring her to her proper place, to never let go of her again.

"But – "

There was so much amiss with the notion she didn't even know where to begin with her protest. Would he rather die from her hand than live without her? It was, in fact, not unlike him to take an absurd romantic stance like that. Under the reserved exterior, Bill's emotions were his true compass.

She wouldn't indulge him in his flight of fancy.

"I know," he said. "She talked me through the objections."

"She did?"

"She was very articulate." Was that a wince?

It made sense, though. Any Laura would have no trouble at all explaining the flagrant folly of his choice and the risks involved.

Bill lifted her hand with careful courtesy and guided her down the final few steps that lead to his Quarters - as if she was made of glass, as if she was loved.

She could break the illusion any second, she could lift him off his feet without any effort with her new Cylon strength, but his attentiveness was soothing and she was reluctant to break the spell. It would collapse in on itself soon enough.


	25. Chapter 25

[Resurrection Hub, Laura's Quarters]

"What's this tale, about this being my last body?" The bearded Tigh copy sat on Laura's couch as if it was his, unflappable as if he owned the Hub and the entire Cylon species with it. He singularly lacked Saul Tigh's need for swagger and bravado to compensate for perceived inadequacies. If he hadn't been the colonel's mirror image, Laura wouldn't have recognized him.

"It's not your last body," Ben said. "There is a Colonel Tigh living amongst the humans."

Tigh grimaced. "One?"

They nodded. Now that she'd lived and died as a Cylon for months, Laura could feel the drawback of having just one reserve body waiting for you. And Tigh didn't even have that, because she'd intervened and used the last of his spare bodies for a download that didn't even resemble the Tigh she remembered.

"The Colonel doesn't know he is a Cylon," she said. "He's second in command of the human Fleet."

"If he's a sleeper agent, he's a deep one." Ben flinched. "He enjoys tormenting Cylons more than any other human we have encountered so far."

Tigh's brows crawled up his scalp, but then he shook his head, leaving it be for the moment.

"What's the baloney about John boxing me?"

Ben looked at Laura, in a silent plea for help as if it was all too new to him. Tigh followed his gaze until his eyes rested on her.

"What is the last thing you do remember?" she asked. Where did this Tigh fit into Cavil's plans, this unique model that Ben called his father? Was Tigh the creator of the Cylons? Impossible.

And yet.

"We'd just created the Eights and were conceptualizing a Nine to replace the Daniels, when John –"

Tigh stiffened and took a deep breath as if a foul memory struck him, but Laura's mind had already screeched to a halt, hooked by his casual admission that he _was_ indeed the Cylon creator. Or one of them, from the sound of it.

" - when John got out of control. Ellen thought it endearing, but in a fully-grown machine, tantrums are ugly, and John's rages escalated. He railed against us for giving his model a human body instead of an advanced machinated one, but there was nothing we could have done. The Centurions insisted on taking their evolution to that next level, not us. It was the price we paid for them to end their war with the humans."

" _You_ ended the First Cylon War?" Laura asked, incredulous, and yet almost convinced he was telling some version of the truth by the calm matter-of-factness of his claim.

"First?" Tigh caught her in a piercing gaze.

"What?" She struggled to get back to the present, to this Tigh, this self-proclaimed savior of humanity. It was just too much. She glanced at Ben, who stood by as if having a religious epiphany, apparently swallowing Tigh's assertions wholesale.

Tigh snapped his fingers.

" _First_ Cylon War?" he said, as if unused to repeating himself, observing her as if she was the feeble brained one, instead of –

No, no, he wasn't like the Colonel at all. He was too clever by far and apparently he'd been boxed for more than a few years, if the notion of more than one Cylon War shocked him.

"Yes, First Cylon War." She had his full attention now. So she told the man who had confessed creating humanity's destructors, in a few sentences what he had wrought.

"Leoben?" There was a raw edge of rage in his voice Laura had never heard from the real - the other - Tigh.

Shrinking under Tigh's gaze, uncharacteristically at a loss for words, Ben nodded almost indiscernibly.

"Leoben?" Tigh bended forward, disbelief in his voice.

"We did."

The color drained off Tigh's face and his hands closed to fists. Laura harbored the sudden hope that, even if he wasn't Bill's friend, this new outraged Tigh could be persuaded to be on their side after all.

The muscles in Tigh's jaw worked under his taut skin. His lips drew back, baring his teeth. He turned to Buster.

"We ended the War," he spat at the centurion. "We ended the cycle of war between man and machine. We paid the price you demanded. The war was over!"

Buster stepped back. His red eye swished uncertainly. He raised his hands in defense.

"Uhm," Ben said. "Centurions don't have speaking abilities anymore. We added telencephalic inhibitors to the new models."

"Is this true?" Tigh asked Buster.

The centurion nodded.

Saul turned to Ben. "Then why was a new war started?"

Ben stepped back. "We needed to avenge the enslavement of the Cylons by humanity," he said, his eyes shifting from Tigh to Laura - a plea in them.

As if she would say anything in defense of the genocide.

"By adding telencephalic inhibitors?!" Tigh in a fluid movement, rose and advanced on Ben until he hovered chest to chest with him, crowding his personal space. He seemed to tower over the Two, even if he was not half an inch taller.

Ben drew back. "We needed to prevent the humans from ever regrouping." He faltered under the scorching glare of his creator, and then he held his tongue, his gaze darting through the room, resting anywhere but on Tigh.

"Have you any idea of the size of the universe?" Tigh heckled him.

"Sure." Ben eyed him, confused.

"You could have gone anywhere, explored the galaxy with your siblings, but no, you had to repeat the mother of all Cylon mistakes, you had to do it a third time!"

He raised his fist, and Laura thought for a second he was about to hit Ben, the father chastising the kid that had turned out to be an adult he despised, but Tigh turned his back on Ben and stood quivering, his hands clenched to fists.

Laura's focus shifted. "Third time?" she asked, wondering if she'd understood correctly.

Her question seemed to pull Tigh out of his capped rage. He caught her in a hard blue stare. After a slow measured inhale, he let his breath escape, unfolded his fists, straightened and seemed to shrug off some of the tension from his shoulders, almost as a deliberate act, as if he'd called forth a subroutine and activated it. And maybe he had.

"The Thirteenth Tribe has had its own machine uprising," he said, calmer now, "two thousand years ago. Five of us escaped and came to warn the Twelve Colonies, but we were too late," he said, "the war had already started."

She didn't hear the ending of his explanation.

 _Thirteenth Tribe_. Did he say Thirteenth Tribe?

It was as if he'd pushed a lever that undid the floor under her feet, opening a chasm. She was swallowed whole, and she plummeted, wind whistling past her ears. The Thirteenth Tribe, Earth, had been the one carrot the Fleet had had, the one hope of a friendly welcome for the remnants of humanity. And the Cylons had beaten them to it.

"So," Tigh summarized, oblivious to the blow he had dealt her, turning to Ben, his voice saturated with sarcasm. "So, you allowed John to box us and to lead you into genocide."

He might as well have hit Ben. "We didn't know. None of us knew you ever existed."

Tigh's forehead creased. "Right," he said, his eyes alive with skepticism.

"Memories have been altered," Laura supplied. "Only the Threes kept looking for the unknown five."

"The _Unknown Five_!? We, the frak, created them!"

"You'll have some reprogramming to do then." She couldn't feel sorry for the bruised ego of the creative genius behind the genocide.

Tigh lips tightened at her rank indifference to his problem.

She shrugged.

Their eyes locked.

"And who created this Nine, by transforming a human?" he asked, sounding as if he would undo that decision too, undo the whole Roslin line, while he fixed the rest of the problems his offspring had spawned during his absence.

"The Ones and the Fours," Ben said, "though the Fives are in on it too."

"Why?" Tigh asked. "I mean, she is fine enough looking," he eyed her up and down, appreciation apparent in his eyes, "but hardly an original concept. She's just a copy of a naturally occurring genetic coincidence."

Laura tried to suppress her smirk at his offhand disqualification. After Cavil's abuse, Tigh's attitude meant little to her. And his exasperation with natural procreation was laughably out of touch. Procreation would be the one project all humanoid models would group around, despite their differences. Her hand covered her abdomen.

At her soft snort Tigh turned to her. "No offense, lady," he said, "but copying nature hardly counts as Art." She could hear the capital in the last word.

"None taken," she said. "And, please do inform Cavil of your insights. I'm not here of my own free will; I'm here as a tool for the destruction of what's left of humanity. My only wish is to end that."

"Tool, how?

"I was the President, and the partner of the military commander, who is now the sole leader of humanity. He will be tormented beyond measure when copies of his former lover start resurfacing in the Fleet."

"Having his lover back, could restore him," Tigh countered.

"He is supposed to shoot them on sight. "

Something flared in his eyes. "His partner?" he asked incredulously. The drunken Colonel had been fiercely loyal to his unfaithful Ellen, and this one kept asking after her. How long had they been a couple?

"I'm a Cylon," Laura continued, still standing by her order to shoot. "An enemy agent. If he can't stomach killing us," she said, "then a Cylon presence will build up in the Fleet to do whatever Cavil has programmed my copies to do."

Cocking his head to one side, Tigh seemed to contemplate that scenario.

"The Thirteenth Tribe has always felt an allegiance to the twelve others, even after we left them," he muttered, weighing what he'd heard.

"It has?"

"Of course we have, you are our creators."

Oh?

 _Oh._

centered&&&/centered

[Commander's Quarters]

His quarters smelled of leather, of Bill, of books, and there was a lingering fragrance of _Caprica's Dawn_. She hovered near the hatch, while Bill made his way to the decanter on the side table, poured two glasses of water and turned back to her. His eyes crinkled with affection as he looked at her. She remembered kissing those eyelids, those too long lashes, and sliding a fingertip down over the hard bridge of his nose, over the softness of his warm lips.

The weight loss had done him good and the additional greying of his hair gave him even more distinction than before. Now that the traces of the sleepless nights and excess booze were fading from his features, he looked much like her old partner.

It would never be the same again.

Then again, maybe it could be easier, without her workload and responsibilities as President, without the cancer threatening to cut short their happiness.

Smiling back at him, she took a step in his direction, pulling the hatch close behind her.

"Bill?" A sleepy female voice drifted from his rack.

He ignored it and walked back to Laura, two glasses in his hands. "Water?" he asked.

She nodded, taking the offered glass, and looking over his shoulder to his bunk.

"Please sit," he said.

The leather couch welcomed her with its familiar creaking puff. She saw movement in his rack and two slender naked legs dropping over the side.

The younger one pushed herself in an upright position and sat there for a moment, drowsy, disheveled, naked but for the bandage around her neck, youthfully magnificent, and by the looks of it, thoroughly frakked, quite recently.

The young woman stared at Laura in much the same way Laura stared at her, objecting to the other's presence and strangely connected at the same time.

Bill, standing in the middle, looked from the uncovered young woman in his rack to the middle-aged one on his couch and shrugged noncommittally, as if saying that this was how it was going to be.

She shook her head. It was not his decision to make.

The younger one climbed out of his rack and covered herself with Bill's dark robe. Laura eyed the woman, recalling the scent and softness of the robe against her naked skin.

The woman walked over and wrapped a long arm around Bill's middle. "Hi again," she greeted Laura, amiably enough.

Laura saw the possessive behavior for what it was and let it slide. She would hold off on her suicide plans a little longer to investigate the younger one's programming. She was too close to Bill for comfort.

"For now, this is the safest place for you to be," Bill said.

Laura looked around. On a practical level it would be possible to live here with three people, but she doubted she wanted to sleep on the couch listening to Bill frakking a younger version of herself in their bunk. "You're kidding," she said.

"Not kidding," Bill said. "We'll make do. I have a plan."

"A plan?" said Laura.

His telephone buzzed. Bill walked toward it and picked it up. "Yes? ... Ah." He listened intently, then nodded. "I'm on my way." He placed the phone back on the hook.

"Another one?" the younger one asked, wrinkling her nose.

Bill grinned. "Not for now." He looked at Laura. "Make yourself at home while I'm gone". And to the young one: "Help her, she's not there yet. We can't have her trying to end it, again."

Laura shuddered, feeling betrayed by how easily he'd read her and how he'd carelessly shared what he knew with a Cylon whose programming he'd no idea of. She withdrew into herself defensively.

With a short nod to the both of them, Bill left his Quarters, closing the hatch behind him.


	26. Chapter 26

[Hub, Centurion Repair Unit]

The centurion parts were neatly stacked in racks, here the arms, there the toes. In the far corner, a few Fours were working on centurion heads.

"You can't be serious," Doral said to Cavil.

"I've been hampered by the confines of this human body long enough," Cavil said. Contempt and loathing drew his muscles taut; emotions he could very well do without. If only his parents had had a modicum of common sense. He's ready, as ready as he's ever been, to make the transition, to start a new prototype for his line.

"But a centurion!" Doral said.

The centurion stood in a corner of the room, plugged into the Hub, as empty as the knight's armor Cavil had seen on display on Picon after the victory. His new body.

"Think of the wonderful visual spectrum," Cavil said. "Think of seeing a supernova through the eyes of a centurion. Never be hungry again. Not losing your mental capacity because your sugar level drops." No longer being confined and controlled by the flesh.

The Four stared at him.

"Never mind," Cavil said. "Just do it."

Cavil fingered the telencephalic inhibitor in his pocket. He had removed it from this specimen himself. His model, after all, craved access to his higher brain functions and speech.

Doral cast one doubtful look at Cavil. "Your choice." Finally, his hand dipped into the liquid interface.

Cavil scrutinized the centurion for the first twitch of his finger, the first glow of his visor. Nothing.

"Well?" he demanded.

The Four looked at him in frustration, then pulled his hands out of the liquid. "What parts of your brain are you least attached to?"

"Why?"

"There's not enough space."

"What?"

"Your memories and cognitive patterns require the storage capacity of wetware." Doral eyed him speculatively. "Unless you want to abandon complex thought."

"Complex?"

"Leading a war, or presiding over a meeting. Being you."

Blast. Cavil turned and walked away.

[Galactica, Bill's quarters]

After Bill had left, the younger one stared down at Laura, hiding behind her aloof presidential mask. She couldn't honestly believe Laura would fall for it. Then again, her own face probably showed the same detachment.

"You're not my sister." The muscles in the younger one's jaw tighten. Bill's dark robe reached to halfway her shins.

"Definitely not," Laura said. "But we are both Cylons. Maybe we can help each other to end this." Killing two birds with one stone, removing all Cylon presence from Bill's quarters, from the Fleet. "We're both a risk to Bill and to the Fleet."

The younger one hummed. "Bill was right about you. You still believe killing ourselves will help him."

Laura felt the warmth of the flush that crept up her face. "And you don't?" she asked, as flat as she could.

The young one shot her an annoyed look. "Death leads to resurrection. Another round with Cavil and Simon."

"So?" The prospect wasn't new. Nothing Bill could do would ever change that. Bill couldn't save them. It was their problem.

"Resurrection on the hub will also," the young one said, "lead to us disclosing the Fleet's secrets."

A whisper of doubt slithered into Laura's collected thoughts. Disclosing humanity's secrets hadn't posed a problem before. Then again, what Fleet secrets did she know? The sooner she left the better. But that woman… She lives with the Commander of the Fleet. What does she know? Would it be safe to kill her?

"He has mourned her until it left only a shell of him," the younger one said. "He almost destroyed himself. We cannot allow that to happen again. The Fleet needs him more than ever, without the original Laura to assist him. Killing ourselves is out of the question."

The image of Bill stooped in mourning, hugging himself, swaying back and forth in his empty quarters, nipped at Laura's resolve. "But our programming?" she ventured, despite a sick twirl of dejection that wavered in her gut.

"He couldn't care less. We've both tried to kill ourselves. He thinks it's the best evidence we haven't been turned by Cavil."

"Is it?" The idea was more than a little naïve, given Valerii's sudden awakening and shooting of Bill.

"I don't know," the other admitted. "But staying with Bill is infinitely better than staying near Cavil."

Their happiness was inconsequential. The Fleet mattered. "We still may kill him," Laura said, squaring her shoulders.

"Will you kill him?" the younger one asked, squinting at her as if she had an airlock ready for the eventuality.

"I don't intend to," Laura said. "He's Bill." Of course, she wouldn't kill Bill, not if she had anything to say about it. "Do you?"

The younger one shook her head. "He knows we still might. He says he'd rather die in our arms than lead the Fleet with Baltar and Zarek."

"He's a sentimental romantic." Laura snorted. " _Our_ arms?" she asked, suddenly unable to swallow.

"Oh yes. He's set his mind to generously sharing the Commander around."

Her pulse skipped, her chest tightened. "Does he now?" It explained a good deal of his behavior earlier. He didn't just pretend she was his Laura, he wanted her to be his Laura.

The memory of Bill's naked mass, close, his warmth seeping into her skin, his belly, his greying pubic hair, his cock, and his eyes in that singular state of bliss and of love, pushed the air out of her lungs. Her body betrayed her, relaxing as if she was safe, lying in his arms, listening to his soft snoring. She fought the wave of want that tried to pull her under, stopping rational thought.

"You mind sleeping with him?" the other one asked.

Laura made a small 'what do you think' gesture. Loving Bill wasn't an intimacy she wanted to share with any other woman. She was not going to take turns, waiting for that girl's leftovers. It had taken them long enough to get together. He was hers.

"Good," the young one said.

 _Good?_. Laura's hearts thuds. Was she willing to give him up?

He was the young one's former lover just as much as he was hers. The other woman had had the chance to enjoy the pleasures of Bill's undivided attention already. Her naked body in Bill's robe was the proof of their consummation. Laura would never give that up herself.

"But you?" Laura ventured.

"Her diaries have given him a whole set of new plans in that area."

Laura rolled her eyes. Didn't he understand? Sharing Richard was a different matter entirely.

"You want to share _him_?" Laura asked the young one.

The woman shook her head imperceptibly as if she wanted to deny her denial. Laura eyed her, much in the same way she had scrutinized the women Richard had brought to her bed. At least the young one was less an uncertain factor. Her memories and desires would be similar if not the same. Sharing Bill must be anathema for her too.

"Why?" Laura asked.

The young one blinked and caught her eyes, looking at her as if Laura was a particularly thick Quorum member, waiting for the simple logic to trickle home; all president and not a little bit snotty.

Laura grappled for the logic of it, but could find none. "Why do you want to share him?" she asked.

"You remember being Cavil's plaything?" the young one asked.

Those were the memories she tried to block most of all. His presumptions, his masochistic joy in her distress, in bending her to his will, his one-sided releases. Her body clamped shut, bile rose in her throat. She nodded silently unable to find words she cared to impart, feeling frayed.

"What is sharing Bill, compared to that?" the young one asked.

The tension that had set in Laura's muscles, fell away all of a sudden. She was glad she sat.

From feeling herself to be Bill's one and only Laura, ready to reclaim her rights to his bed, she was yanked back to being a copy, a Cylon who'd spent an inordinate amount of time thinking up novel ways of killing herself, and who saw killing herself as her sole mission. She fingered the bandage around her neck.

She exhaled a soft "Oh."

She shouldn't let herself be diverted from her objective. She should take the fight back to where it belonged, to Cavil, by ending this farce of a life. She should leave these quarters right away before she got hopelessly entangled in this travesty of a life.

But the fleeting spark of hope the younger one had kindled had eased her grip on her hardened perseverance, her set plan to end this. Laura closed her eyes, worn out by the rollercoaster of desire and hope, that ended in squarely facing the dread of being Cavil's minion; a misery she could not escape, not even in Bill's quarters. If only she could sleep it off, and wake up with a clear mind, to execute her plans. Exhaustion drags her under, like the pull of an undertow she's too tired to fight.

"Laura?" the young one asked.

She needed to open her eyes, confront the woman, tell her that her fantasies about sharing Bill, were not only gullible but also distracting them from what really mattered, the Cylon war, but she couldn't bring herself to open her eyes.

"It's nothing," she heard herself mutter. She felt afloat, drifting from wishing to stay, to needing to go, to wanting to be safe, too tired to stop the pendulum that swung between the options. She didn't even have a bed to withdraw into anymore. Would Jack accept her back in Sickbay? How far was Sickbay? "I have to go", she said.

"Come," the young one's voice murmured.

Laura stood, swayed, and felt the hand of the other one under her elbow and her soft voice coaxing her to walk, coaxing her to stretch her arm out and feel the welcoming matrass, coaxing her out of her outer layer of clothes and into a bed.

When Laura's head touched the cushion, Bill's scent permeated her senses, and she unwound at last, drifting off to sleep.


	27. Chapter 27

[Hub, Laura's Quarters]

"The Thirteenth Tribe has always felt an allegiance to the twelve others, even after we left them," Tigh muttered at Laura.

"You have?"

"We ended the war once already," he said. "I'll not let the Colonies be destroyed now, not by the models we created ourselves." His demeanor was firm, as if he meant what he said, despite the enormity of the task he was thinking of shouldering.

Was the creator of the skinjobs declaring himself on her side? Laura sank down onto the couch. Ben snuck next to her, his hand slipping into hers. Did she dare to believe in this ray of light?

"How?" she asked Tigh. What influence could he have over Cylons programmed to forget him?

He shook his head. "I don't know yet. My copy is the human fleet's second in command, maybe we could …" Tigh mumbled as if working toward a solution, a joint action of both his models.

"Your copy is a drunk with an inferiority complex," Laura said. "He led the Fleet once, and almost destroyed it in the process."

Tigh looked at Ben for confirmation of this preposterous scenario.

Ben nodded. "Like I said, a very deep sleeper."

"More like someone messed with my programming," Tigh growled. "Who else can we trust?" he asked, stroking his beard, deep in thought.

"The Threes, I suppose," Laura said. They had kept looking for the missing Five after all.

"And possibly the Sixes," Leoben added.

Buster raised his hand.

"And Buster here," Laura said, smiling at the centurion.

Tigh walked over to Buster. "Kneel," he said. "Bend your head."

What?! But to Laura's surprise Buster let himself down on his knees.

Saul snaked a finger under Buster's skull and with a grunt opened the hard flap at back of his cranium. He ripped out a steel element about the length of his hand, somewhat thicker in the middle than at its ends.

"Stop!" Laura stood, ready to grab it and put it back in.

"It's the inhibitor," Ben said.

"There," Tigh said, "you can rise now."

The centurion rose to his feet, wavered for a second, then fixed Saul in his stare. "Thank you," he said with a metallic sounding voice.

Laura gaped. "Buster?"

"Laura," he said, wriggling his fingers at her as he had been doing all along.

She grinned back at him.

"Don't broadcast this yet," Tigh said.

"But my brothers," Buster said.

"We don't want to tip off the Ones just yet," Saul said. "Let's have a plan first. Who else would be on our side?"

"The whole of humanity, if we could contact them," Laura said. "Stopping this war is their first priority."

"We know where they are," Ben said.

"Would they listen to you?" Tigh asked Laura. "Or shoot you on sight?"

He had a point. She herself had ordered Bill to shoot her. Persuading him not to kill her would be suspicious in Bill's eyes. It was exactly what he'd think that Cavil would have programmed her to say.

"I'm not sure," she said. "I expect most people would not respond well, if I returned from the dead."

"Hm," Tigh said, "And if I went myself?"

"The XO would have a coronary." Laura laughed. "It would destroy his self-image as a Cylon fighter. And seeing two Tighs would unhinge Adama almost as much as my resurrection would. They are best friends, Tigh and Adama. Adama trusts his Tigh with his life."

"Interesting," Tigh said.

"Contacting the Fleet is not an option," she said. "Not without executing Cavil's plans."

"Let's get things running here, then," Saul said. "How do we surprise the Cavils?"

"Exterminate," Buster said.

[ _Galactica_ , Bill's Quarters]

Laura didn't know how long she'd slept, but she woke up to the gravelly sound of Bill's voice, drifting in from the couch, saying her name. The rest of his sentence was muffled in what sounded like a soppy kiss.

There was the rustle of clothes being removed, the heavy breathing of two people striving to get as close to each other's skin as possible. Bill's long low chuckle send electric shocks to Laura's toes.

She rubbed her temples with her fingertips, trying to regain her composure.

Should she speak up? It would stop them as sure as a kid announcing itself would stop its parents. Not the role she wanted for herself. But the sounds. She felt tears prick her eyes.

"Couch," the younger one's voice demanded. "On your back."

The creak-puff of the couch betrayed that Bill followed instructions now.

In the bunk, Laura raised her body on an elbow and peeked out, toward the couch. She could see Bill's head, resting on the leather, a crooked grin on his face, and half of the younger one's naked backside, standing there, looking down at him, the long coils of her auburn hair falling free over her shoulders.

Bill would be erect now. As if she could see through the wall that blocked her view, her mind's eye served pictures of his cock, the fulfilling grid of it, the veins that stood out, the drip of precum she longed to lick, knowing how the shiver would run up his spine and cloud his eyes when she did.

"Laura," he said with his low husky voice, and her pulse skipped, stirring in her the dizzying need to hold him, kiss him, coax him to moan again, see his eyes darken with arousal. Her hand clenched, unclenched. Back to sleep, she should go back to sleep.

"Bill," the young one answered, as if he had addressed her and not Laura, which he had, of course. From the way the woman flexed her butt muscles Laura knew she was as wet with desire as Laura was. Heat had pooled between her legs from the sound of his voice alone. Was it impossible to be in the room with a naked Adama and not want him, even when he was ogling a copy of her? She needed to close her ears and hide under the blankets or she would -.

Or, could she have him at least once before she'd have to go back to the hub?

The thought of having him shifted into the memory of having him, of feeling his cock prodding against her labia, pushing them aside. She swallowed her gasp, curved her back, and slipped one hand into her panties, her fingers gliding through her wetness. She squirmed in the bed. Please, she thought, please.

"Please," Bill wheezed.

The craving in his voice had her melting, aching for his touch.

She heard the younger one's soft laugh and saw her amble over to the couch, and straddle Bill's head. Oh, frakking gods. Laura's breath caught in her throat. Bill's hand came up to hold the young one just where he wanted her. The thought of his lips on her flesh, where she now only had her fingers, had her writhing against her hand, trying to breathe, while being reduced to a bundle of raw nerves.

The young one bent down over him, and, if his strangled groan was any indication, slipped his cock into her mouth.

Laura licked her lips and peered out of the bunk even further to see more, but the wall blocked her view. She opened her legs wider and slipped a finger inside, shaking with need. Her finger was ridiculously inadequate compared to Bill's generous fingers, tongue, dick. She shuddered in frustration. Maybe she should just close her ears.

From the couch, sloppy slurping sounds drifted in, interlaced with Bill's helpless whimpers demanding her attention, her touch, drawing her to him.

Laura slipped out from under the blankets, out of the bunk, toward the head until she finally could see the younger one deep-throating Bill. When his slipped a finger deep inside her, a shiver of arousal ran through the young one's body.

Laura braced herself, smothering the urge to swat the woman away, straddle him herself and sink down on that cock, feel how he would slide past her walls, over her g-spot. Her knees wobbled and she sank down against his closet, on the carpet near the bunk, slipped her hand into her panties again, trying to release some of the impossible tension, unable to look away, taking in every shudder of the young one's body as Bill's tongue ravished her. The unfulfilling shadow of her own finger on her flesh did little more than torment her with its inadequacy.

Laura looked around for something, just about anything, to use as a proxy for Bill's cock, to replicate the needy movements of his hips, to feel him thrust inside her. There was nothing but her finger careening through her slippery folds in vain.

On the couch, Bill gently moved the younger one's hips up from his face, and turned her. Her lips grazed his. With a grateful sound, she sank onto his cock. On the floor, Laura moaned in frustration.


End file.
